


Heartbreak Weather

by ani1210, lilaWoelkchen



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Drinking, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Heavy flirting, I forgot friends to lovers, I'm Bad At Tagging, Post-Break Up, Smutty, and bad at summaries, doing stupid things because of alcohol, heartbreak Weather Album, loooooots of drinking, relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:14:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 32,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24167182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ani1210/pseuds/ani1210, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilaWoelkchen/pseuds/lilaWoelkchen
Summary: Hailee really thought she had closed the chapter Niall forever. She thought she had left him and their past behind and was ready to move forward. But then Niall's new album Heartbreak Weather got released and instead of listening to her friends to ignore it, Hailee sat down with her dog and wine and listened to every single song. And every single song has its history.
Relationships: Niall Horan/Hailee Steinfeld
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	1. Nice to Meet Ya

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is pure fiction and only based on our bored minds during quarantine. 
> 
> ALSO: please, don't copy or translate this story without asking. Also english is NOT our mother tongue, so please tell us if you find any mistakes.

„Are you sure that’s a good idea?“ Kennedi asked through the camera.

“I have to hear it, Kennedi” I answered without looking at her. “I’ll never get over him if I don’t know what he has to say.“

“Don’t you think it’ll remind you of stuff from the past you have already gotten over?”

“Maybe, but I have to hear it. I have to know what he thinks and I’m still not talking to him, so that’s the only chance I get.”

“You could just ask Ed or Lewis or James or God knows who?”

“Kennedi.”

“Alright, do what you think is best. But call me later, yeah?”

“Will do. Bye.” I hung up before she could say anything else and opened Spotify instead. I saw his album immediately. Of course Spotify would recommend it, I’ve listened to his first one on repeat. Fucking algorithm. I took a deep breath, opened the album und pressed on shuffle.

_I like the way you talk, I like the things you wear_

_I want your number tattooed on my arm in ink, I swear_

It took me exactly three seconds to figure out what this song was about.

\---

“May I take your jackets?”

“Oh, thank you” I was able to rush out before Selena dragged me with her. “C’mon, we still have time to drink some shots!”

“Why is it so important to get drunk?” I asked suspicious.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” So she did not want to talk about Justin. Alcohol it is, I guess.

I stumbled after her on my way too high high heels through the club towards the bar. Arriving there, Selena raised her hand and ordered two Tequila-shots. I hated Tequila. But being the good friend I am I just smiled at her. “Salud!”, she grinned and gave me one of the shots. We raised our glasses for a toast and I threw my neck back. The Tequila burned down my throat and I grimaced. “Disgusting.” Selena just laughed.

The party got more and more crowded and I just raised my hand for our fourth shot, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw a widely grinning face.

“May I join you?” he asked nodding towards my shot.

“Niall”, Selena gasped happily and obviously drunk. “I didn’t know you guys were coming. You know, because it’s Taylors Party and all…”

“How many shots did she have?” Niall asked me trying not to burst into laughter.

“Three I know of” I answered grinning back.

“Well in that case –“ he grabbed Selenas shot, ignored her protests and turned back to me. “Cheers!” I laughed, raised my glass and finished my hopefully last Tequila for this night.

“Hi, I’m Hailee” I introduced myself.

“Ah, yeah, Pitch Perfect right?” he laughed and I grimaced. Really original.

“I’m Niall, nice to meet ya” he replied still grinning.

“Ah, yeah, British Ellen DeGeneres, right?” I shot back and grinned as well.

“Irish!” he mock-complained and I laughed.

“Sorry I offended you. Can I make it up with a new Shot? But no Tequila!” I saw Selena started talking to Hailey Baldwin and decided not to include her in the next round of shots. She has had more than enough.

“What’s wrong with Tequila?” Niall asked placing himself next to me at the bar.

“Oh, don’t get me started.”

At the end of this night I had changed my opinion on Tequila rapidly.

-

“And they really used to date?” I yelled at Niall over the loud music. He leaned closer to my ear and said: “Yeah, but like three years ago. We’re all cool now. Thank God.”

I tried to lean closer to respond but soon realised I was too drunk for complex movements like this. Balancing myself I grabbed lightly onto Niall’s thigh and leaned back. My hand was still on his thigh.

“You okay?” he laughed but before I could react, a brown-haired boy appeared next to us.

“Niall, we have to go” he said with a stern look on his face. “Harry and Louis are both drunk as fuck and have started to twerk on the dance floor. And they really can’t do shit.”

“Did you film it?” Niall asked excitedly and the boy rolled his eyes. “Of course. Now move.”

“Yeah, give me a minute alright? See you outside, Liam.” Liam didn’t look too happy, but nodded and left, probably to stop Louis from stripping on the dancefloor.

“Sorry, Mum says I have to go” Niall apologized. “But I’m sure I’ll see you again.”

“I’ll be at the bar” I replied and raised my glass.

“Would it be okay to ask for your number?” he asked suddenly sounding shy.

“Uhm – sure”, I replied. “But I have no pen.”

“I’ll get your number tattooed on my arm in ink, I swear”

Before I could respond, Liam came back, an obviously very drunk curly haired boy hanging over his shoulder.

“C’mon, I got Harry. Louis is already in the car. We have to go, now!”

“But I need a tattoo first!” Niall protested and Liam looked like he was about to lose it.

“A pen would work as well” I threw in, trying to help. Liam sighed and pulled a black marker out of his pocket. “There you go” he said.

I grabbed Niall’s arm, shoved up his sleeve and pulled him a bit closer to me. “Bossy, I like it” Niall winked and I snorted. “You wish. Call me tomorrow and get home safely.”

His face was right next to mine and without even thinking about it I pressed my lips on his cheek. “See ya” I waved to Liam and left the three boys standing at the bar. At least two of them were staring after me.

-

“How’s my bestest friend in the whole wide world?”

“I won’t compliment your song just because you say nice things, Niall.” I laughed into the phone. It’s been a year since we’ve met at Taylor's party and grew a lot closer during that period of time. We had met a few times at various events and even when we were both travelling for work, we stayed in contact, sending us funny pictures or snippets of new song ideas.

His song _This Town_ got released a few days ago and I haven’t had the time to talk to him about it. But right now I had a day off and decided to call him.

“C’mon, I know you love it” Niall teased and I rolled my eyes.

“Actually I called to congratulate, but now I think I’d rather remind you of that one time you threw up on Brad Pitt's shoes.”

“You promised we would never talk about this again!” Niall mock-complained and I laughed. “Alright, alright, your song is awesome! Happy?”

“Very, thanks.” Niall smiled. “It’s amazing! Everyone is so supportive!”

“Yeah, I know, you’ve literally reposted every single post about this song” I grinned and Niall grimaced.

“Speaking of, where’s the support from my bestest friend in the whole wide world?”

“Why? Didn’t Ellie Goulding post something about you?”

“Still not funny, Hails.” Ellie was a sensitive subject for Niall.

“I’m sorry. I’ll post something later, okay?”

“Now!” he demanded laughing and I rolled my eyes.

“Alright, give me a sec.” I opened Twitter und started to type.

_@HaileeSteinfeld: I love ‘This Town’_

“Happy?” I asked, but didn’t get a response. Instead I got a notification from Twitter.

_@NiallOfficial: thank you, love_

Love. He never called me Love. I felt that I started to blush and tried to hide my face from the camera.

“Niall, I’m sorry, I have to go” I cut him short as he was just about to say something.

“But –“, he started.

“Sorry, Niall, it’s urgent. See ya, okay?”

“Yeah, see ya” he mumbled and hung up.

He just called me Love. _Love_! I didn’t know what to think or feel.

Sighing, I sank back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. Niall was my best friend. I shouldn’t get so excited about such a stupid, little word. He probably didn’t even mean it like that! I was just being ridiculous and about to ruin an amazing friendship with my stupid feelings. Great, Hailee. 


	2. Small Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Small Talk - Niall Horan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is pure fiction and only based on our bored minds during quarantine.
> 
> ALSO: please, don't copy or translate this story without asking. Also english is NOT our mother tongue, so please tell us if you find any mistakes.

“Hey lad, don’t you think you should go a bit slower?”, Shawn Mendes looked at me with a worried expression, eyeing my fifth drink in an hour.

“Do I look like a Canadian to you?”, I laughed and winked at him as he rolled his eyes. “I’m just enjoying myself and don’t worry, I’ve got everything perfectly under control.”

“If you say so”, Shawn smiled, taking a sip from his drink.

I looked around, trying to make out any familiar faces in the chatting crowd in front of me. Of course I spotted people I knew from previous events or even just from television, but no one I desperately needed to talk to. I wasn’t in the mood for meaningless small talk.

“Niall, I just saw Camila over there and we haven’t seen each other in a long time. Is it okay if I-”

“Go on Shawn, I’ll see ya later”, I replied and we hugged briefly before Shawn disappeared between dancing bodies.

I hadn’t expected the Jingle Ball Aftershow Party to be this lame. Or maybe I was already too drunk, I couldn’t exactly tell anymore. Sighing, I started walking through the crowd and tried to push myself past Cara Delevingne and Ashley Benson who seemed to have a lot of fun on the dancefloor. As I finally managed to leave them behind, a hand wrapped around my upper arm and pulled me into another direction. I turned around to find Hailee behind me.

“Hails! I already thought someone was trying to kidnap me”, I grinned and engulfed her into a tight hug, probably a bit too enthusiastic.

“Well, maybe I am about to, you never know”, Hailee smiled and I couldn’t help but laugh.

She was looking absolutely beautiful tonight, no doubt.

“How have you been, we haven’t talked in two weeks”

“I’ve been nothing but fine”, she responded and looked shyly at her shoes. “What about you?”

“I am great actually, although this party is a bit lame”, I answered honestly, feeling the alcohol buzz in my head.  _ Fuck, maybe Shawn was right. _

“You think so? I quite like it”, Hailee replied and started moving a bit to the music.

“These are your dance moves? I would beat you in any dance battle any time!”, I bragged but she just laughed.

“Don’t think too highly of yourself, Horan”

“I can show you if you don’t believe me”, I fired back and also started dancing.

Hailee laughed once again and began to move her hips to the beat. I couldn’t help but stare for a moment before I caught myself. I wasn’t sure if I was just far too drunk by now, but she looked ridiculously hot right now.

Calm down. Don’t do it. She’s your best friend… 

Fuck it.

I moved closer to her and obviously caught her completely off guard as I placed my hands on her hips and pulled her into my space. But Hailee didn’t complain nor pushed my hands away. I just grinned at her as The Hills by The Weeknd started to play and the mood suddenly changed. The air in the room felt a lot hotter right now and it seemed like everything around us stopped. Hailee’s and my gaze locked and she looked back down shyly. I raised my hand to catch a strand of her hair that was falling into her face which caused her to look up again. Our eyes met and she briefly bit her lower lip.

_ Oh gosh. _

I haven’t felt as attracted as to her right now than to anyone in a long time. I let my hands wander from her hips to her lower back, ignoring all the doubts flowing through my mind.

To my surprise, Hailee didn’t seem to mind and actually acted less shyly than before. We continued to dance until I felt brave enough to pull her even closer and put one leg in between both of hers.

The way this woman moved, Jesus. My thoughts were only revolving around her, how irresistibly gorgeous she looked and what I would have done if I had been alone with her.

“C’mon, let’s skip the small talk and go straight to my hotel room”, I offered, tired of having at least five pairs of eyes trained on us.

“Niall… Do you really think that’s a good idea?”, Hailee asked and bit her lower lip once again, driving me crazy without even realizing it.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”, I replied impatiently, drawing small circles on her lower back with my thumb.

“Because you’re drunk, can’t think straight and probably end up regretting even asking me this question?”

“I am not drunk!”, I argued back but couldn’t hide the grin on my face.

Hailee shot me a look while raising her eyebrows at me.

“Okay, I am a tiny little bit drunk”, I admitted and Hailee giggled. “But I promise I won’t do anything you don’t want me to and this won’t have any effect on how we get along after this night”

I looked at her with puppy eyes and she laughed.

“Pinky promise?”, she extended her finger out to me.

“Pinky promise”, I grinned and intertwined our fingers before pulling her after me through the crowd.

-

“So…”, I started talking in order to break the silence.

We just got into a taxi and had a ten-minute ride ahead of us to get to my hotel. I carefully placed my hand on Hailee’s thigh, not too high, and began to draw circles on her skin with my thumb in order to comfort her a bit.

“Are you already excited for our San Francisco trip in a few weeks?”

Hailee’s face lit up as she turned her head to look at me and nodded. We had planned this trip a month ago after Hailee had told me non-stop about how beautiful San Francisco was. And we had thought that it would be a great opportunity to spend more time with your best friend.

Well. We didn’t see this night coming.

“I already thought about all the places you need to see”, Hailee told me excitedly and suddenly raised a hand up to my hair.

“There’s a strand of hair that’s totally out of place”, she justified as she blushed a bit.

“Fix it then”, I grinned at her cheekily and she blushed even more but continued to carefully run her hand through my hair.

“It’s really soft”, she whispered and smiled.

Our eyes met and I could already feel myself leaning forward a bit until the taxi came to a sudden halt.

“We are there, I suppose”, Hailee smiled and reached forward to open the door.

“No, wait, I am going to do this”, I said, got out of the car and opened the door for her.

“Thank you”, she winked at me and took my hand.

-

“Do you want to drink some water? I feel like I could drink four glasses right now”

“Yes please”, Hailee answered as I walked into the kitchen to pour two glasses of water.

I returned with them and placed them onto the table in front of the couch before sitting down beside her. 

“Soooo”, she started, “I told you about the places in San Francisco you really need to see? I practically have the whole five days planned out, there is so much to see. You will seriously love it! I haven’t been there in-”

I let my eyes wander over her face as she continued rambling, noticing how cute she scrunched up her nose when she talked about something she disliked. And the way she gestured with her hands along to what she was saying. I didn’t even pay attention to her words anymore because I was so caught up by simply admiring her beauty.

Oh God, what was I doing? I should stop immediately. Or… 

I interrupted her by leaning forward to her but this time, I placed my hand on her cheek and pulled her face closer to mine before pressing my lips to hers. At first, I had the impression that she was rather shocked by my actions but after a few seconds Hailee hesitantly kissed back. The kiss grew more passionate by the second and I carefully grabbed her hips and pulled her onto my lap. I felt her hands in my hair and I placed mine on her thighs, slowly wandering upwards.

All of a sudden, Hailee pulled away and carefully pushed my hands down a bit.

“I need to use the toilet real quick”, she announced, her cheeks were red from our actions and she stood up without looking me in the eyes and quickly disappeared.

I couldn’t wrap my drunk mind around why she suddenly seemed so shy again but I desperately needed to lay down. My head was spinning.

The only thing I remember was telling myself that I would only rest my eyes until she came back.

-

The first thing I noticed was that my head was pounding like crazy. I groaned and tried to move my hand up but something was blocking it. And what was tickling my face like that? I blinked carefully, groaning again as I slowly adjusted my eyes to the beaming sunlight in my hotel room. 

Wait. 

A slender figure was cuddling into my body, her smooth brown hair all over me and my face, apparently.

_ Hailee _ .

The memories all came back in that exact moment, causing me to widen my eyes. Would she be mad and wanted to leave as soon as she woke up? Hopefully not.

I couldn’t help but smile at how peacefully she laid next to and partly on me. Trying to move my arm that was wrapped around her back because it felt completely numb, I gave my best not to wake her from her sleep. But as soon as I did so, she began stirring in her sleep and slowly opened her eyes.

“Hey”, I smiled down at her.

“Hey”, she replied shyly and hid her face behind her hair.

A short silence fell around us before she brushed her hair back and gazed up to me.

“Are you feeling hungover?”

I laughed quietly and nodded.

“How bad is it?”

“Very”, I replied and rubbed my forehead, “but don’t worry, I remember everything that happened last night”, I added and Hailee blushed again.

“You do?” 

“Yes” I smiled and briefly closed my eyes again. My head fucking hurt.

“Should we talk about it?”, Hailee asked carefully after a short silence and I couldn’t help but smile.

“We will definitely talk about it, but not right now.”

I pulled her closer again and wrapped my arms around her body. At first, she felt a bit tense but after a few seconds she relaxed in my touch and cuddled into me. 

Two hours later, I opened my eyes again but Hailee was gone. But after a quick look at my phone, I saw she had sent me a message, explaining that she had somewhere to be and she was sorry that she had left me like that. But she would still really like to talk about last night.

I smiled to myself. I was happy.


	3. San Francisco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is pure fiction and only based on our bored minds during quarantine.
> 
> ALSO: please, don't copy or translate this story without asking. Also english is NOT our mother tongue, so please tell us if you find any mistakes.

I glanced around the busy airport. When I had touched down in San Francisco I had received a message from Niall saying he was waiting for me. But I couldn’t find him. 

We haven’t seen each other since the Jingle Ball a few weeks ago. Meaning, we also have not talked about what had happened between us or what it would mean for us or our friendship. We had talked a few times over the phone, just small talk (no pun intended), but whenever Niall had tried to change the topic towards that night I had cut him off. That’s nothing you should discuss on the phone.

At least that’s what I told myself. Honestly it was more because I was freaking scared of this conversation. 

But now I had no more excuses and I knew that I would eventually have to talk to him about this. But maybe not today. Maybe tomorrow. 

“Hails!” someone yelled behind me and I turned around. Niall was leaning against a wall, wearing a white cap, a striped shirt and sunglasses. Next to him was a small suitcase. 

“Hey”, I smiled, trying to hide my nervousness, and walked over to him. He pulled me into a close hug and I buried my face in his shoulder. Being almost as tall as he was had its perks. When I pulled back to ask him whether he was ready to leave I felt his lips briefly brushing my cheek. 

“How was your flight?” Niall asked casually and grabbed my suitcase, walking towards the exit. Acting as if nothing had happened. I wouldn’t survive this weekend. 

-

“This room is amazing!” I said excitedly and walked towards the window overlooking the city. 

“Happy you like it”, Niall said quietly behind me. I turned back around and smiled at him. 

“Which room do you want?”, I asked him looking at the two doors leading out of the living room. 

“There’s only one bedroom.”

“What?” I avoided his gaze. 

“I asked you, remember? When we planned this whole trip? You said one bedroom would be fine, we could have Netflix parties and stuff.” I immediately saw the little twist at the corner of his mouth and knew what he was thinking about. Netflix parties. Sure. 

“That’s not what I meant you dirty mind!”

“I know.” Slowly he came closer. “Hailee, should we -”

“Go? Yeah, you’re right! I have lots of plans for us today and we really should get going. Grab your stuff, c’mon.”

“But -”

“Now, Niall!” Sighing, he nodded and grabbed for his purse. “Alright, let’s go” he said and followed me out of the room. 

-

“I really like San Francisco” Niall said as we got out of our jackets. 

I smiled at him and slipped out of my sneakers. We had just come back from our first day in the city and while we had had a lot of fun and I had enjoyed showing him the city, I had particularly avoided staying too long at one place. Didn’t want to give him the chance to start a more serious conversation than our mock discussion about whether Nando or KFC tastes better. 

“Glad to hear that.”

“But that’s all for today, right? My feet are literally about to die.” 

I laughed. “No, we’re done for today.”

“Good” he murmured and briefly looked at me. “Come here, please.”

I froze. I knew what he was about to say. I couldn’t do this right now. I needed to stay in my safe ‘we’ll be friends forever’ bubble, just a little bit longer. I was terrified of this bubble to burst. 

“Actually, maybe we should go out and grab something to eat? I’m really hungry and I’m sure you…”

“For fucks sake, Hailee, stop avoiding me!” he growled and stepped closer. I tried to dodge his hand but he reached out for my hip and pulled me closer. 

“Do you have any idea how annoyingly hard it was not to say or do anything today?” he said, more quiet now, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear. 

“Walking with you around this city, seeing you happy and excited and wearing these ridiculously hot denims? And you just keep avoiding me as if you were scared of me. Stop fucking running away from me!”

And before I could even think about a fitting response I felt his lips on mine. My heart started racing and my eyes went wide. How did I end up here? But instead of pushing him away to start an actual conversation about this, like the responsible adult I was supposed to be, I just started kissing him back, burying my hands in his hair. Without letting go of my lips he started pushing me back towards the bedroom door. I felt his hands at my butt, signaling me to jump up. I wrapped my legs around his hips while he opened the door. 

Giggling, we sank onto the mattress and my hand wandered down his back under his shirt. “Off”, I just demanded quietly and he obliged happily. 

-

My face was buried in the soft pillow and I happily glanced at Niall lying next to me. He was absently caressing my back while ordering room service over the phone. When he hung up he turned around and pulled me close to his chest, between us nothing but the white bed sheets. He started running his hand through my hair while I was smiling up to him, placing a kiss on his bare chest. 

We just stayed like this for what felt like hours until I heard a loud knock on the door. Niall quietly groaned into my ear. 

“Please, don’t make me get out of this bed”, he begged and I raised my eyebrows. 

“And how exactly do you invision me going to the door like this?” I looked down at my bare body. 

Niall smirked. “Well I personally wouldn’t mind the view of you walking around n -”

“Go get the food, Horan”, I said playfully and pushed him away. He pouted but eventually he got up, picked his trousers up from the floor and went out to open the door. 

I heard him talking to someone, but I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. After a few minutes he came back inside. At the view of food my face lit up. 

“Wow, you didn’t look that happy this morning”, Niall mock-complained and started placing the plates on the bed. 

“Well, I can’t eat you”, I explained, grinning at him. When I saw the look on his face, I added: “Don’t you dare saying what’s going on in your head right now!”

Niall just laughed and jumped back onto the mattress next to me. “I really had to convince this dude at the door that it’s not necessary to come inside and arrange our food on a table.”

“Thank you”, I said quietly and blushed. 

“Why are you thanking me?”, he asked confused. “I did it out of purely egoistic reasons. This -” he pointed at me, still naked and wrapped up in a white blanket “- is most definitely a view I am not willing to share.”

I just rolled my eyes and reached out for the fruits plate. We ate our food and just chatted about the last few weeks since we’ve last seen each other. When all plates were empty Niall turned around and looked at me. The look in his eyes suddenly made me feel very aware of the fact that I was still naked and I pulled the blanket a bit closer. 

“Can we finally talk about this?”, Niall asked quietly and I nodded, avoiding his gaze. 

“You do know that this whole thing isn’t just something casual for me, don’t you?”, he asked and I just shrugged with my shoulders. 

Niall sighed, laid his hand under my chin and forced me to look at him. “It isn’t. So can we please talk about this, so I can go back to cuddling with you?” I couldn't help but smile and nodded. 

Niall leaned back again, and raised an eyebrow. “So, you know, what I think. What’s been going on in that head of yours?”

“A lot”, I started and locked my eyes with his. “This isn’t casual for me either. I’ve been freaking out about you ever since the first time you’ve called me Love. Please do not comment on that”, I added when I saw the look on his face. “But I don’t know, Niall - could this even work out? We’ve had to plan this weekend three months in advance, just because our schedules are so packed. How should this work in a - “ I stopped, unsure what to say. 

“Relationship?” he suggested and smiled. “We both know it’s hard. But you’ve just finished your movie and I’ve just finished my album. We’ll have more time from now on.”

“But there’ll be a next movie and a next album”, I argued. “You’re going on tour, Niall! I couldn’t deal with seeing you only every three months on a weekend hidden in a hotel God knows where on this planet.” 

“Who said something about hiding? Fuck, Hailee, do you really think I would hide having a girlfriend like you? And we will see each other more often than we’ve seen each other before. I’ve earned a good amount of money over the past few years, I’m pretty sure I can afford a flight every few weeks over the ocean to see my girlfriend!”

For a moment I stayed silent. Deep down I knew he was right. This could work out perfectly fine if we just wanted it enough. And hell did I want this. I wanted him. 

“Pinky promise?” I asked leaning closer and holding up my pinky finger. 

“Pinky promise”, he agreed, linking our fingers and pressing his lips softly on mine.

-

I felt a tear rolling down my face while all the memories of San Francisco crashed down on me. Angrily brushing it away, I pressed on pause and stood up from the floor. I needed something to drink. Preferably juice. Preferably grapes. Preferably containing alcohol. 

While I was standing in my kitchen and filled my glass with wine, I remembered all those trips we made to San Francisco. San Francisco had become our secret place, our hideaway, our safe haven. 

Now it had become a place I couldn’t go to without getting sad and heartbroken. San Francisco without Niall just didn’t feel right. It felt like something was missing. Whenever I was walking around the streets it felt like something was missing. A numb place in my heart I couldn’t really get to work again. That’s why you shouldn’t invite your boyfriend to your favourite place. He’ll ruin it for a lifetime. 

But it was over now and I was done with him. Even though he had screamed at me to hear him out, I had never wanted to hear his excuses. I had just left and had never come back. Until now. 

I grabbed my wine glass and went back into the living room. I pressed play, took a long sip and stared on my screen, mentally preparing for the next song. 

Whatever the Freak Heartbreak Weather was going to be. 


	4. Heartbreak Weather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author of this story. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any previously copyrighted material. No copyright infringement is intended. This story is pure fiction and only based on our bored minds during quarantine.
> 
> ALSO: please, don't copy or translate this story without asking. Also english is NOT our mother tongue, so please tell us if you find any mistakes.

I hated New York. It wasn’t the people and it also wasn’t the city itself; the real problem was the overall atmosphere and the feeling of not belonging to anyone anywhere there. The city made you feel so lonely and especially on tour, this feeling of loneliness could easily get the best of yourself. I thought New York was hectic, full of business people and far too crowded for my own liking.

So when Hailee had asked me excitedly if I wanted to visit her in New York during a promo tour, I wasn’t exactly as excited as she was but decided to ignore my disliking for the city in order to see Hailee again.

It had been two weeks since I had last seen her which is an awful lot for a fresh couple and I missed her like crazy. The days in San Francisco had been almost dream-like and I had enjoyed every single second of it but it had been just as hard to leave again. Leave her.

That’s why I hadn’t thought twice about travelling to New York, even though I prefered other US-american cities a whole lot more.

When I got out of the plane and into the Uber I had ordered, I already noticed once again what the disadvantages of being in New York were. The traffic was horrible and I was stuck for half an hour before finally crossing a main street. The heavy noise around the car and the people around it who practically all seemed as if the devil was after them didn’t exactly help the situation. I sighed as I looked at my watch, realizing I was already ten minutes late.

But all these obstacles were totally worth it when I got out of the car, entered the lobby and someone immediately grabbed my hand and dragged me to a more or less covered part of the lobby, pressing their lips to mine.

“I thought you would never come”, Hailee’s eyebrows were raised but she giggled and kissed me again.

“New York is awful”, I mumbled against her lips, kissing her a bit harder. I had missed this feeling so much as it had gotten familiar over those five days in San Francisco and had already become something I couldn’t imagine my current life without.

“It’s not”, Hailee disagreed and disconnected our lips, caressing my cheeks with both of her hands, “and save that for later. You won’t regret it.”

I must’ve looked at her wide-eyed and probably a bit worked up because she simply laughed and winked at me. “Come on, I already had dinner in the restaurant of this hotel yesterday and it was amazing! You shouldn’t miss out on that.”

I groaned quietly but followed after her.

-

“So tell me, why do you hate New York so much?”

I was in the middle of enjoying chicken with pasta, so I swallowed and shrugged my shoulders.

“The city is so full of people but it always feels lonely here.”, I tried to explain, “For example, you are here for a show and all that happens after playing at the venue is getting into a car, being stuck in traffic, being yelled at by people who push past you and not being able to sleep because of the noise from outside.”

Hailee’s glance was filled with genuine concern and a sweet softness which made me replay my words in my head as I had probably sounded quite negative.

“Which doesn’t mean that I didn’t want to come here! I am super excited to spend time with you here and I already anticipated-”

“I know that you didn’t say that in order to offend me”, my girlfriend smiled and placed her hand gently over mine over the table, “Can I show you something after lunch? Maybe it will change your mind.”

-

I laced my fingers through Hailee’s as we walked down a small road. Hailee had brought me a bit away from the city centre in order to escape from the noise, people and exhaust gases which I had complained about half of the car ride. 

I turned my head to glance at Hailee beside me and I just hoped she didn’t notice me staring. She looked so effortlessly beautiful today, I couldn’t even tell what exactly it was. The chill January air caressed through her hair and threw it back in waves, her brown coat was tightly wrapped around her but she still shivered a bit from the cold. And then she looked up to me, smiling as she caught me admiring her and brought my hand up to her lips to press a light kiss to it.

Jesus. She’s got me wrapped around her little finger and I knew it. But I wouldn’t change a single thing.

“We are there”, Hailee announced and pointed to a small shop that almost seemed as if someone had tried to hide it between the other conspicuous stores. 

We entered the shop through a wooden door and inside, we were greeted by vinyls of every age and every genre. The walls were coated by album covers, except of one that held space for different guitars in different colours and designs. The whole room was stuffed with vinyls in general, but not in a bad way. It gave the shop a rather homey atmosphere and I couldn’t help but let my eyes wander in awe from wall to wall a couple of times. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”, Hailee whispers and I beamed at her, pressing my lips to her temple.

“It’s fucking perfect”

For the next two hours, we stayed inside the shop, rummaging through the vinyls and pulling one out eventually to show the other what we had found. The best thing probably was that we had the whole shop for ourselves as no one except us bothered to come in. 

The owner of the shop eyed us for a while until Hailee decided to congratulate him for having the probably most amazing shop in whole New York. He commented that with a small smile and offered us to play some music.

One beautiful melody after the other filled the room. I nodded my head along to them, hummed a bit along and started singing after a while. I spotted Hailee at the other side of the room doing the same, her eyes glistening with joy.

As the first few seconds of Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars reached my ears, I bumped my hip into Hailee’s, grinning at her as I took her hand to spin her around. She began to laugh adorably.

“Niall, what are you doing?”

“Care to share this dance with me?” I bowed a bit down and she laughed even harder.

“Do you really want to dance?”

“Why not?”, I shrugged my shoulders, “I quite like this song.”

Hailee didn’t refuse when I took one of her hands in mine and wrapped the other around her waist. Placing hers on my shoulder, she giggled when I spun her around a bit.

_ When I see your face _ _   
_ _ There's not a thing that I would change 'cause you're amazing _ _   
_ _ Just the way you are _ _   
_ _ And when you smile _ _   
_ __ The whole world stops and stares for a while

Locking our eyes and sending her a deep glance, I lightly sang the lines along with Bruno. I could sense how flustered she got as an adorable blush covered her cheeks and she momentarily hid her face in the crook of my neck.

“Look at me”, I murmured, pecking the top of her head.

Our glances met once again, but this time Hailee also sang along as we danced around the room, giggling from time to time when we almost stumbled over each other’s feet.

And that was the exact moment I knew that I was in love with Hailee Steinfeld.

-

We ended the day with discovering a café that was equally small as the shop before and hid ourselves in a corner far in the back to stay unseen. I could hear murmurs now and then when people looked into our direction but I didn’t exactly mind.

Hailee and I chatted away the whole time, talking about the most casual things like how we both liked to lay in a bed with a soft mattress with the difference that she couldn’t sleep with at least four pillows surrounding her.

“But you make up for the lack of them”, she winked at me playfully as I rolled my eyes.

She told me about how press tour was and how she missed home and that she was glad I was finally there. I told her about how I still toured with my current album and how fantastic the crowds in the different cities had been. I didn’t tell her how much I missed her and how much I had wished to share the experiences on tour with someone special, someone like her. But I was determined to show her throughout this New York trip.

_ New York wasn’t actually that bad. _

-

In total, Hailee and I visited New York three times.

The first time had been the fantastic discovery of the record shop and the little café.

The second time we met there, Hailee did some songwriting and producing there. I came by during a five day gap between tour dates; it was already the end of spring. The sweet scent of flowers laid in the air and even made New York a dream-like spring paradise. We decided to spend the majority of the time we had together outside in order to enjoy the temperature and the atmosphere full of life and joy.

It was once again Hailee’s idea to go to Central Park to have a picnic. I wasn’t as creative as her when it came to date ideas, but I always made sure it got romantic because I didn’t want her to miss out on ‘normal’ dating experiences.

We had searched until we had found a spot that wasn’t directly next to the paths and hidden behind trees and bushes. Stretched out on a blanket after having eaten too much grapes and chocolate, we gazed up at the blue sky and I closed my eyes as I relaxed for the first time in days. Tour could get quite hectic and this was the perfect escape.

“Niall?”, Hailee asked me and I glanced at her, noticing that her eyes were still closed.

“Yeah, Hails?”

“Do you like New York?” 

The question came a bit out of the blue because I hadn’t been complaining about the city since we had first been here.

“Depends I guess”, I answered and reached up to fix my hair that got a bit blown away by the light breeze. 

“On what?”, Hailee opened her eyes and glanced at me questioningly.

“When I am here on my own, I still feel lonely because New York is so overwhelming and much to take in”, I told her and ran my thumb over her cheek, “But when I am with you, I actually get to see the nice side of the city. I guess when you’re with the right person, every place on Earth can be enjoyable.”

Hailee blushed and shook her head. “Stop being so cheesy, Niall. Besides that, are you sure about every place on Earth?”

I rolled my eyes. “First of all, you love it. Second of all, don’t ruin my compliments and just accept them, alright love?”

She grinned and stuck her tongue out at me. “Alright”

-

The third time in New York was also quite eventful. Another award show happened to be located there and both Hailee and I were invited. The show itself was a bit boring because our managements had refused to let us sit next to each other as  _ “it would cause to much trouble and attention around us” _ which we had tried to avoid from the very beginning of our relationship.

Annoyed and not happy at all, we had both accepted the decision but sneaked off during speeches and breaks to see each other. A few winks here and there were thrown our way and Shawn even pulled me aside to tell me what a beautiful couple Hailee and I were.

After three long hours of applauding, listening and vibing to good music, Hailee and I met in front of the building, our Ubers ready to take us to the afterparty location.

“You know what?” I chuckled at her and linked our hands, “Let’s skip the afterparty. I am not even in the mood to go to a party.”

“I am glad we think the same”, Hailee grinned.

When I attempted to open a taxi door for her, she shook her head.

“Let’s walk the way back to the hotel.”

“Are you sure that’s a good-”

“Of course, I know a quite nice route back.” I couldn’t resist her pleading smile so I gave in and followed her through streets that lead us a bit away from the busy ones.

The night sky was clear and even though the bright lights of New York swallowed a big part of them, I could count a few stars.

I didn’t feel the need to speak and Hailee seemed to think the exact same. We walked next to each other in a comfortable silence, our hands intertwined and Hailee cuddling into my side. I could feel her other arm wrapping around my upper arm as well and she placed a delicate kiss to it a couple of times.

So yeah, after all, New York wasn’t the worst city of them all.


	5. Dear Patience

“I don’t think he’s that serious about us” I sighed. Kennedi on the other side of the phone frowned confusedly. 

“Why would you think that? I thought you guys had a great time in New York last weekend?”

“We did! It was amazing! And now I miss him even more.”

“So what’s the catch?”

“That I miss him. And I don’t think he misses me.”

“Did he say that?”

“Not like that” I mumbled and looked down to my feet. “But he always tells me how great his tour is, which, yeah great, I’m happy for him, but it doesn’t sound like he misses me at all. It sounds like I’m nice to have but not really essential to him.” I took a deep breath after I finished the sentence. I’ve never said it out loud. 

Kennedi didn’t say anything at first. She just frowned and started biting her lip. “Did you talk to him about how you feel?”

“No!”, I replied immediately with a harsh tone. “We’ve only been together for two months or so, I can’t push him like that. I have to stay patient until he is ready to open up to me. I can’t force myself onto him.”

“That’s not what you’d do, Hailee”, Kennedi argued but I shook my head. 

“You know I always rush into stuff like this. I always want too much too soon. But I can’t ruin this thing, Kenn, he’s too important.”

“Alright”, she sighed but she did not look convinced. “You know him best, after all. If you think that’s the right way to deal with this, I won’t say anything.”

“Thank you”, I smiled. It looked forced, even to me. 

\- 

It had been three days since my conversation with Kennedi, but I still felt weird about this. It also didn’t help at all that it seemed like I just couldn’t escape him. I wasn’t talking about the messages I got from him on a daily basis, I was talking about literally everything else. 

Whenever I opened Instagram I saw a post about his last concert. Saw his laughing face and his ridiculously fluffy hair. 

Whenever I opened Twitter I saw videos from the concert, posted by his fans. Heard his voice, his laughter and the screaming crowd. I wished I could be there as well. 

Whenever I opened a news page I saw a new article, another interview, another speculation about him and his assistant, another rumor about whether One Direction would reunite or not.

I was about to go crazy. 

Of course he thought that this exact moment would be the perfect time to call me. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself before I accepted his Facetime Call. 

At first it was a casual conversation. He asked me about my day, my new film project and told me a hilarious story he had read this morning. 

But then he started talking about his tour and my face fell a little bit. I wanted to be happy for him, so badly, but I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I missed him so badly while he was obviously having the time of his life. 

So I just forced myself to smile and nod whenever he said something. 

“You know, this time just feels amazing, I can’t describe this feeling when I enter the stage”, he said excitedly and I laughed quietly. 

“Yeah I can imagine”, I responded and looked at his face. Suddenly he looked a bit nervous. 

“What's wrong?” I asked worried. 

“Nothing!” he replied immediately with wide eyes. “I was just thinking - you know I’m in London next week and maybe you, you wanna come as well? You know - to my show?”

“You want me to come to your show?” I asked just to make sure that I hadn’t misunderstood his stuttering. 

“Only if you really want to! I mean it’s a long flight and it would only be for two days and -” By now he was rambling and I started to laugh. 

“Niall, I would love to come to London” I smiled and his face lit up. 

“I was hoping you’d say that. You know this whole touring is great and I love it, but I’d be better if you were here. I really miss you Hails” he said. Just like that. As if it was nothing special. As if he had said it at least a billion times before. 

I saw his face falling again when he realised that I was rubbing my eyes. “Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry, I-”

“Don’t be ridiculous” I interrupted him once again and tried to calm myself down. “It’s just - I didn’t think you’d feel this way.”

“Why would you think something like that?” he asked, sounding seriously concerned. “Did I say something or -?”

“No, it’s because you didn’t say anything”, I began to explain. “This was the first time you told me that you missed me.”

The look on his face was heartbreaking. “I didn’t, did I? I’m a terrible boyfriend.”

“You’re not!” I protested. “This isn’t something you did or didn’t do, it’s my personal problem. I have too many expectations, I fall too fast for someone and I literally have no patience. It’s more than okay if you want to take things slow, Niall, I don’t want to rush into anything.”

“But Hailee, you really aren’t”, Niall replied sadly. “I’m so sorry I made you feel this way. I’m just not good with this whole - emotions thing.”

I laughed. “Did you listen to your album? It’s basically an emotional striptease.”

“It is”, he agreed. “But I have never talked to anyone about those emotions. That’s how I deal with my feelings, I write about them. I’ve written tons of songs about how much I miss you, trust me. I’m sorry I’ve never told you how important you are to me.”

“You wrote songs about me?”, I smirked and finally, he laughed again. 

“I’ll play them to you some day, deal?”

“Pinky promise?”

“Pinky promise.” Our fingers touched through the screen.

-

With dead eyes I stared at the wall across the room. The song kept playing and I felt the anger building up in my chest. He couldn’t be serious. 

A whole album about me was one thing. 

But a song about how I felt and about my emotions was a whole other level of audacity. 

I tried to calm myself down, told me that this should probably be it, maybe one song about the breakup and afterwards it would be about freaking Tara. 

I listened to the last tunes as the song faded out and hugged my pillow tighter. I could control my anger.


	6. Black and White

When I heard the first tunes of the next song, I knew I couldn’t. I thought it couldn't get worse than  _ Dear Patience _ , but the next song proved me wrong. Because I already knew this one. This was one of the songs he had written about me. Black and White was  _ my  _ song!

I felt tears running down my face as I listened to the familiar lyrics. I remembered every verse. When the song ended I didn’t feel like crying anymore. I felt like screaming. 

So I screamed. Loud. Screamed the anger out of my soul as I smashed the pillow against the wall across the room. But it didn’t help. 

I grabbed for my Macbook and while the memories of our trip began to take over my mind I started typing. For the first time in ages I searched for Niall Horan on Google. 

-

I heard the doorbell ringing. Confused, I got up from the couch. It was late already and I didn’t expect any visitors. Maybe it was Mrs Miles from across the street, she often came over to bring me some of her cookies, since her grandchildren didn’t live in Los Angeles. I wrapped a jacket around my shoulders and checked the security camera. It wasn’t Mrs Miles. It was Niall. 

I ran downstairs and pulled the door open. Niall was standing there, hair fluffy as always and a bit tired, a suitcase next to him. 

“What are you doing here?”, I whispered in shock and he laughed quietly. 

“Well, I can leave, if you want me to.” 

Before he could even move one foot, I ran to him and pulled him into a close hug. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his lips onto my cheek. 

“Missed you”, he whispered into my ear and I couldn’t respond, I just buried my nose into his neck, inhaling his scent. 

Niall grabbed my hand and pulled me back into my house. I thought we were going to my living room, but he went straight to the stairs up to my bedroom. I raised an eyebrow and smirked. 

“Big plans, huh?”

“Oh yeah, really big plans. I can already picture it, just you and me and your ridiculously giant suitcase.”

“Sounds...wait. Suitcase?” I asked confusedly and stopped. Niall tried to keep walking, but I didn’t move a single bone. 

“Niall, what exactly are you doing here?” I asked slowly and he sighed. 

“Can’t just surprise you, can I?”

“You already surprised me, you’re here”, I responded quietly and stepped closer. I ran my hand through his hair and for a moment he just closed his eyes. 

“I want to take you to the Bahamas”, he finally explained and my hand stopped. 

“Bahamas?”

“Yeah, like a vacation trip. I mean” he stuttered. “Only if you want to. I should’ve asked you, not just jumped at you like that. It’s not really a vacation actually, I’m supposed to write some tunes there, get some inspiration. But right now you’re my biggest inspiration, so I thought maybe I should just take you with me. I know it’s not ideal, but I’ll still have time to spend with you, I promise! And you said, you’d have a few days off this week, so I thought that…”

I interrupted his nervous rambling by kissing him on the lips. Firm and a little harsh, because honestly, did he listen to what he just said? He had called me his inspiration! Niall started kissing back and dragged me towards my bed. 

“Maybe we’ll start packing in twenty minutes” he mumbled against my lips and I nodded while I started pulling up his shirt. 

-

The Bahamas were beautiful. At first I was anxious because of course there had been paparazzi at the airport. And of course they had taken pictures of us. It’s not that I wanted to hide my relationship. I just really liked my privacy and I really didn’t like people violating my privacy. And taking pictures of me in my joggers and my boyfriend’s sweater while I was boarding an airplane clearly counted as violating my privacy. 

But Niall had calmed me down as soon as he had seen them. He had taken my phone and blocked all the news pages. “We don’t need any gossip on this trip. You are here to relax and inspire some songs, not to stress yourself over some stupid headlines. When we’re back next week, no one will care anyways because Justin Bieber and Selena broke up yet again.” I really didn’t want to laugh but I couldn’t help it. He was right. 

-

We’ve been here for four days now and it has been absolutely amazing. I usually slept in late while Niall got up early to sit down at the piano in the living room. He said he was most inspired during the early hours and I definitely would not complain about waking up to soft piano tunes and my boyfriend’s voice. 

When I got up we usually had breakfast together and then I either joined him in the living room, watching him play or I took a walk on the beach, or I was lazily lying in the sun, waiting for Niall to join me. 

We usually spend the afternoons together. Just lying in the sun, going for a swim and once, Niall insisted on building a sand castle. It was nearly perfect. 

The only thing that bucked me was that Niall refused to show me any of the lyrics he wrote. He claimed that he didn’t want to show me an unfinished song, but I was almost certain it was an excuse. If his songs were really about me, I assumed they were pretty emotional, so singing them to the person they are about was a pretty big deal. I knew the feeling, I understood him. It just frustrated me that he wouldn’t talk to me about it. 

Right now, we were walking down the beach in comfortable silence, Niall was playing with my fingers and I thought that now was the perfect time to ask him about the songs. 

“How do you feel about showing me one of the songs you wrote?” I asked softly and looked him in the eyes. He avoided my gaze. 

“Not yet”, he mumbled and kept playing with my fingers. 

“Why not?” I asked, trying not to sound desperate. I just really wanted to know what was going on inside of him and apparently his music was the only chance I would get. 

“Because they aren’t finished” he responded, still avoiding my gaze and staring at the sea. 

“Niall, we’ve been here for four days” I said carefully. “I’m sure you’ve finished at least one. They don’t have to be perfect, I’ll like them anyways.”

He smiled, finally looked at me and wrapped one arm around my waist. He leaned down and pressed a kiss on the tip of my nose. “I promise you, before we leave, you’ll hear one.”

-

Two days later, he still refused to play one song for me, but I’ve decided to stop pushing. If he felt ready to let me in, he would to it. 

As in right now, I found myself in the probably most romantic, most cheesy and still most perfect setting ever. Niall had prepared a picnic, the basket and the blanket in one hand, the other one had been holding mine and he had pulled me down the beach to a hidden bay, where we would be hidden by the palm trees surrounding us. If one of my friends had told me their boyfriend did something like this for them I most likely would have laughed or vomited. But right now, I just couldn’t stop grinning. 

We just talked and talked for hours while we ate the snacks Niall had prepared and watched the sun slowly going down. I really thought it couldn’t get better, but Niall surprised me yet again. Just when I wanted to rest my head on his chest, he stopped caressing my back and stood up. 

“Are we leaving already?” I asked, trying not to sound too sad. He didn’t respond, just walked over to one of the palm trees and came back with his guitar. I gasped when I saw the guitar and looked at him with big eyes. 

“What are you doing?” I whispered and he laughed, sitting down in front of me. 

“Keeping my promise” he simply said and before I even had the chance to respond, he started playing. 

_ That first night, we were standin' at your door _ _   
_ _ Fumblin' for your keys, then I kissed you _ _   
_ _ Ask me if I wanna come inside _ _   
_ _ 'Cause we didn't wanna end the night _ _   
_ __ Then you took my hand and I followed you

_ Yeah, I see us in black and white _

_ Crystal clear on a starlit night _

_ In all your gorgeous colours _

_ I promise that I'll love you for the rest of my life _

_ See you standing in your dress _

_ I swear in front of all our friends _

_ There'll never be another _

_ I promise that I'll love you for the rest of my life _

_ Now we're sittin' here in your livin' room _

_ Tellin' stories while we share a drink or two _

_ And there's a vision I've been holdin' in my mind _

_ We're sixty-five and you asked _

_ When did I first know, I always knew _

_ And I see us in black and white _

_ Crystal clear on a starlit night _

_ In all your gorgeous colours _

_ I promise that I'll love you for the rest of my life _

_ See you standing in your dress _

_ I swear in front of all our friends _

_ There'll never be another _

_ I promise that I'll love you for the rest of my life _

_ And I want the world to witness when we finally say "I do" _

_ It's the way you love, I gotta give it back to you _

[ _ I _ ](https://genius.com/Niall-horan-black-and-white-lyrics#note-19286512) _ can't promise picket fences or sunny afternoons _

_ But at night, when I close my eyes _

_ I see us in black and white _

_ Crystal clear on a starlit night _

_ There'll never be another _

_ I promise that I'll love you _

_ I see us in black and white _

_ Crystal clear on a starlit night _

_ In all your gorgeous colours _

_ I promise that I'll love you for the rest of my life _

_ See you standing in your dress _

_ I swear in front of all our friends _

_ There'll never be another (Never be) _

_ I promise that I'll love you for the rest of my life _

_ And there'll never be another _

_ I promise that I'll love you for the rest of my life _

“Why are you crying?” Niall asked nervously when he finished playing. I couldn’t respond. For the last three minutes I’ve been staring at him with wide eyes, the tears running down my face without me noticing it. Niall raised his hand to brush them away carefully.

“Don’t cry” he pleaded, obviously unsure what to do. “Was it too much? I knew I should’ve waited, but you wanted to hear something so badly, and I did promise you to be more open and tell you how I feel and - “

“I love you” I interrupted him quietly, so quiet, I wasn’t even sure if he had heard me. But he obviously did, because he immediately stopped talking and now he was the one staring at me with wide eyes. “Say it again” he begged, his voice almost broke. 

“Please Hails, say it again, I need to hear it. I need to know that you’re stuck in this just as much as I am. I need to know that you’re just as crazy about me as I am about you, because you really scare the hell out of me and I don’t think I could handle losing you or getting hurt again.”

I saw the desperate look in this eyes, reached out and cupped his face with my hands. I looked him straight in the eyes and said slowly: “I love you, Niall Horan. And I am just as scared as you are.”

His face broke into the happiest smile I’ve ever seen on him and I let out a small yelp when he grabbed my waist and pulled me onto his lap. He kissed me more passionately than he had ever done before and with the song still stuck in the back of my head, I kissed back just as passionately and desperately as he did, trying to lay all my emotions into this kiss while he slowly laid down onto his back, pulling me down onto his chest, his hand slowly wondering up my leg and under my dress. 

-

I found billions of articles. Of course there were multiple articles about him. He did drop his album today after all. But I was looking for a specific one. I knew it had to be there somewhere, Niall had always spoken about wanting to do something like that. Finally I found it. 

The Irish Sun. He couldn’t be serious. Damn this Irish boy.

He had given them an interview about his album, explaining every single track. I was shaking when I clicked onto the link and scrolled down to Black and White. I needed to know what he was saying about it. About me. 

The more I was reading, the angrier I got. He had told me this song was about me. He had written it for me. So now he was either lying to the press or he had lied to me. Either way, it hurt reading those words. Like he had never cared. Like it had never meant something. 

_ I think it might be my favourite on the album. _

His favourite? Was he serious? I had the urge to throw another pillow against the wall. If it really was his favourite, why did he hurt me like that? 


	7. Bend the Rules

Clutching my guitar in my left hand and wiping the sweat off my forehead with the other, I jogged down the stairs of the stage towards the backstage area. It had been another amazing concert in a wonderful city and my fans had been as supportive as they always were. The adrenaline was running through my veins as I spotted Tara, my personal assistant from afar who gave me a thumbs up while grinning.

“Amazing as always, Mister Horan”, she yelled and threw a towel in my direction which I caught easily. 

I placed my guitar onto a table and engulfed her into a hug.

“By the way, you have a missed call by Hailee”, Tara murmured into my neck and patted my back as she handed me my phone.

I sighed briefly before thanking her and opening the messenger option.

_ I am sorry, just finished the concert and I still need to get back to the hotel and into the shower before we can speak x _

At first, it threw me off that the message didn’t seem to come through until I noticed that Hailee had actually called an hour ago and should be at her set for Bumblebee by now.

That’s how it had practically been for the past month. We hadn’t seen each other for two whole months now, the last time being one of the New York dates. We had already known beforehand that the following time would be nothing but exhausting and quite challenging for our relationship as Hailee was currently in the States, shooting the new Bumblebee movie and I still had to tour another few cities and countries.

We had promised each other that we would try to schedule calls and to hear from the other at least twice a week but after the first month, it had gotten increasingly difficult to actually stick to that. Whenever I got up, Hailee was still fast asleep. When I had to rehearse for the tour and actually perform, she would have the time to call but when I was finished, she had to head to set for the day.

Not only the facetime calls grew to be less and less but also the texts lessened over the time and now, it came down to a maximum of five messages back and forth. 

I sighed again and scrolled through the calendar on my phone, searching for this one day in two months we were actually both having off.  _ The day after tomorrow. _

I smiled, already feeling excited about spending this whole day in bed, just talking to her and at least seeing her through the screen.

_ Have a good day love _

-

I made myself comfortable between the white sheets of the hotel room, setting down a cup of coffee on my nightstand before opening the Skype application on my laptop. Hailee was already calling and I grinned as she appeared on the screen.

“Hails, love”, I beamed and felt my heart beating faster. I missed her so incredibly much, I couldn’t even put this feeling into words.

“Babe”, Hailee smiled and waved. “How are you, Niall?”

“Quite good now that I am talking to you”, I grinned as she rolled her eyes at my cheesiness. She loved it and she knew it as well as I did.

The conversation carried on for another four hours. We ate our meals in front of the screens, we listened to music together and discussed everything we couldn’t over the past few months.

“Do you have anything planned for the evening when I am sleeping?”, I asked her as I shuffled from one side of the bed to the other.

“I actually have”, Hailee laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear. “A few friends want to go out and we are probably heading to a karaoke bar. Singing a few songs, having a few drinks and most importantly fun!”

“You deserve that. You’ve worked really hard over the past few weeks”, I told her, ignoring the pain in my chest of not being able to spend this evening with her and her friends together. “Who’s all tagging along?”

“Jesus, you know how unorganized my friends are, half of them reply and decide last second”, Hailee answered but thought about it briefly, “It’s Kennedi, Mary, Anna, Mike and Jonathan for sure… maybe…”

She interrupted herself and glanced down at her phone.

“Niall, I am sorry but I gotta go now. I got a call from management about interviews and I need to call them back as soon as possible.”

“It’s okay, it’s getting late here anyways”, I sighed, feeling sad that the four hours flew by so fast.

“Bye, babe, I’ll call you tomorrow okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll try to get that call”, I winked, “Bye love”

-

I woke up after a healthy, approximately eight-hour long sleep and yawned as I tried to adjust my eyes to the light beaming in the room. Stretching myself before getting up, I slowly got more awake by the second and grabbed my phone on the nightstand.

Checking my phone was probably one of the worst habits I had but changing that was impossible when I got excited every morning because Hailee probably had texted me. But never since the release of Flicker, my phone had blown up with messages like now.

Frowning, I read the first ones Hailee had sent me.

_ I’m back safely babe, thought you might wanna know x _

_ I love you and I miss you lots _

I smiled and replied briefly before clicking onto Tara’s contact who had tried to call me once and had messaged me multiple times. What could possibly be so fucking important?

_ Niall, are you and Hailee alright?  _

_ Is media having a field day for nothing?  _

_ Please call me back as soon as you're awake _

Tara had attached an article of some newspaper to it and I decided to have a closer look as I also noticed messages by Shawn and some of my friends asking if I was doing okay.

“HAILEE AND EX CAMERON SMOLLER BACK TOGETHER? - The singer and her smoking ex meet up for karaoke”

At first, it felt like all the air was kicked out of my lungs and the room was suddenly spinning. Hailee and I had actually never spoken about any of our exes because we had both found it unnecessary unless something severe would have happened during the relationship which could have affected ours. 

_ Breathe, mate _ , I told myself and forced myself to read further. My eyes rather skimmed the text and my brain wasn’t really able to process what I was just reading. The only thing that really caught my eye was a paparazzi photo. The photo was blurry and showed a guy and a girl walking next to each other out of a karaoke bar. 

The guy, apparently Chase, Cameron or whatever the fuck his name was, held the jacket of Hailee,  _ my  _ Hailee, in one of his hands and glanced at her in joy. They were both looking at each other and laughing and seeming  _ too  _ happy. And they were close, way too close. If Cameron would’ve stretched out his arm in that moment, he could’ve wrapped it around Hailee’s waist without a problem.

I tried to ban that image from my thoughts but it didn’t really work. Why didn’t she tell me that her fucking ex was tagging along? The one she had dated before me?! And why had Julia Michaels, a friend of both of us, told me that Hailee had gotten deeply hurt in that relationship and hated his guts when it surely, not even remotely, looked like it?

Closing the tab, I tried to breathe calmly and think coherently. Hailee would never hide something from me, I mean, why would she? She knew that paps were after her 24/7 and that practically every moment of her life on the outside was going to be captured in a photograph.

But I couldn’t fight the strange feeling in my gut that was spreading through my whole body, consuming me and my mind.

Just as I was about to call Tara to tell her that everything was fine, another person tried to reach me. Hailee. 

“Hello”, I said, surprised by how strange my own voice was sounding to me.

“Hey babe”, I closed my eyes tightly at the nickname and breathed out heavily, “I just wanted to call.”

“Shouldn’t you be asleep? It’s around half past two in the morning, isn’t it?” I didn’t even mean to sound so rude but it came out faster than I could think about it. It felt wrong talking to her like that.

“Yeah, I should. But I saw the need to call because I’ve seen pictures online”, Hailee sighed and I suddenly felt angry. Why was she being that way? If someone had the right to behave like that, it was most certainly me. “And I see that I was actually right.”

“Right about what? Looks like you had a great night, so falling asleep should be easy, no?”

Hailee sighed again before clearing her throat. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“There’s literally nothing to talk about, Hailee, you should really go get some rest”, I said, my voice sounding a bit softer. I was already regretting that I had made such a big deal out of this situation but I couldn’t shut myself up and I also couldn’t apologize somehow.

“No Niall, at this stage, I won’t be able to sleep anyways. Please talk to me”, I could sense how desperate she was to make me talk about my feelings but I wasn’t willing to. I was not in the mood and I could barely put into words how seeing that photo had affected me. And also, I was 24 years old, not a child anymore, and could deal with my thoughts and my feelings on my own.

“Everything is fine”, I kept pushing her back and leaned back on my bed. I internally prayed that she would just let it go and hang up because I needed time for myself. But Hailee wasn’t the type of person to give up at a heated point like this.

“Niall, I think you are jealous”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out of it.  _ Think, Niall, think.  _ But the first thing that came to my mind was: “Do I have a reason to be jealous?”

The short silence on the other end of line was deafening while I already scolded myself for asking this question. 

“Of course not Niall”, Hailee said so softly and quietly that it ached my heart. “I am in a relationship with you because I love you. And I would never ever give you a reason to be rightfully jealous of someone.”

But why was I feeling this way then? I stopped myself before I could also throw that at her and sighed, thinking of words to say.

“And I hope you know me well enough to realize that I am not lying to you right now. I could never lie to you. Please talk to me”, she begged again.

“If you could never lie to me, why were you lying earlier then, when we were talking over Skype about who was going to be with you?”

_ I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have said that! _

In my mind, I was screaming at myself but some part of me also enjoyed letting out my frustration.

I could hear Hailee’s steady breaths over the phone.

“I didn’t know that he was going to be there. No one told me he was going to be there. I was pretty surprised as well when I saw him but we are still in the same friend group so once in a while it’s inevitable.”

_ Once in a while it’s inevitable?  _ Did she even listen to herself?! That didn’t look like a once in a while thing, they had been beaming at each other in that photo and had stood so close next to each other that you could already consider it “cozying up” if they had been sitting.

“Well”, I began but nothing else came out of my mouth, so we were engulfed in uncomfortable silence again. 

“I don’t really care about that Chase guy, Hails”, I finally spoke up and tried to defuse the situation by calling her by her nickname. Maybe also a little bit to calm myself.

“It’s Cameron”, Hailee said quietly which helped not in the slightest way. If not, I was even angrier right now. Was she defending him?

“I also don’t fucking care in the slightest way if your ex is called Chase or Cameron I couldn’t care any less!”, I said in a sharp tone, “It’s alright Hailee, we don’t have to talk about last night or that guy anymore.”

“Are you sure?” Hailee asked, once again quietly and filled with an emotion I wasn’t able to read.

“Very. But you should really go to sleep because I have to head out right now.”, I concluded and this time I was lying to her. I had nowhere to be until in two hours but I had to rest my mind and cool down a bit. And I wasn’t able to do that while I was talking to her and constantly being reminded of this mess.

“Are you going to call again this week?”, her voice was small and I sighed quietly.

“Yes, I will. But now I have to go”, I quickly said before my emotions could get the best of me, “Bye Hails”

“Bye Niall”


	8. Cross Your Mind

The screen of my phone lit up and I almost didn’t want to read the message. I knew it was from Niall. And I knew it would be just as weird as the last messages had been. 

It’s been four days since the Cameron-incident and Niall had been weird ever since. Whenever I asked him if he had time to call, he found a new excuse. An Interview, Soundcheck, an appointment with Tara or just the fact that he was too tired and had to go to bed. We still texted, but even his texts sounded weird in my head. He didn’t sound mad or angry like he did on the phone, but he was more distant than usual, didn’t seem to be as interested in my day or my life than before. It felt like he had rebuilt all the walls around him, just after I had torn them down on the Bahamas. But I didn’t want to force him to talk about it, not after the way our last conversation had gone. I didn’t want to fight with him, I just wanted everything to be normal again. 

I understood why Niall was mad about the whole Cameron-thing, the pictures really looked like the whole scenario had been more intimate than it had actually been. We had met in the bar and over the course of the evening I’ve said maybe five sentences to him, three of them had been captured by a camera. But still, I would’ve been mad as well if I had seen such pictures of Niall and Barbara.

I grabbed my phone and unlocked the screen. I skimmed over the chat with Niall and sighed. It sounded so awkward. 

_ Hey Babe, how was your day?  _

**My day was good, thanks, concert went great**

_ Glad to hear! xx  _

_ Are you free to talk today?  _

**Sorry, not today, got some meetings**

_ Oh, okay…  _

_ What are they about? Something important coming up?  _

**Nah, just some stuff with Tara to figure out**

**Talk to you later, Hails, love you**

At least I got an  _ I love you  _ but still, it annoyed me that he seemed to prefer spending time with Tara over me. I knew she was his assistant and she worked for him, but still, they really didn’t have to spend that much time together. I didn’t spend that much time with my assistant!

But I’ve always tried not to be the jealous kinda girlfriend, so I tried to calm myself, locked my phone and got up to get something to eat. Niall wasn’t that kind of guy, I knew I could trust him. We just haven’t seen each other in a long time and I obviously missed him, that’s why I was going crazy over this whole Tara thing. 

-

Eight hours later I was just enjoying myself, watching a show on Netflix and scrolling through Instagram, when a notification on Twitter popped up. It was a message from Kennedi. 

I clicked on it and frowned. Kennedi had sent me a tweet from a Niall Horan fan page. It showed some of the paparazzi pictures that had been taken today. Pictures of Niall walking around in the streets of Lisbon. Walking around with one arm thrown over the shoulders of his assistant Tara. Looking freaking cozy and cuddly. 

_ Are you sure she’s just his assistant? _

I tried to stay calm. I knew first hand that those kind of pictures usually didn’t show reality and could often give you a wrong idea about an situation, but this - 

This girl just got under my skin. She infuriated me without even being here, it was simply the fact that she was laying hands on my boyfriend while I was hundred of miles out of reach. 

Hands on my boyfriend, who still was mad about me walking out of a bar next to my ex-boyfriend while he got a cozy with this freaking girl?! 

I felt anger building up in my stomach. The last days I’ve spend in here, feeling bad about the situation and trying to fix my relationship, while the other half of said relationship didn’t seem to be bothered one bit and prefered to cuddle up with some woman instead of talking to me to figure out our issues!

I was about to figure out whether I wanted to call Niall immediately or throw something against a wall and then call Niall, when Niall’s name appeared on my screen. Oh, so  _ now  _ he had time to call?

“It’s not what you think it is” he said when I picked up the phone before even saying hello. 

“So now you wanna talk?” I said cooly and I heard his heavy breath. 

“Hails, come on, you know it’s not what it looks like” he tried to reason with me, but I was not having it.

“Is it, though? How would I know? I haven’t seen you in weeks and I know we knew that from the beginning, but the least I expected from you was to try to make this work. To talk to me whenever you had a moment off, to call me when we’re both free and to fucking tell me about what’s going on in your life! Instead you’ve been ignoring me for days and -”

“I didn’t ignore you!” Niall protested, but he only fueled my anger.

“You call those messages not ignoring?” I growled. “I’ve had more interesting conversations with the freaking post man this week! But sure, you didn’t ignore me, you just sent me awkward messages, refused to call me and instead got cozy with your freaking assistant!”

“Hailee, you’re not seriously jealous of Tara, are you?”

“Of course I am, Niall!” I almost yelled at him. “She’s with you, I am not. You talk to her, you’re not talking to me. You hug her and I know I won’t get the chance to hug you for I don’t even know how many more days. But at least I can admit it! Because that’s the healthy thing to do! Not being passive-aggressive and cuddle up with someone else to get me mad at you!”

“I didn’t do it to make you angry or get back at you!” Niall yelled back and I felt oddly satisfied because for the first time I finally got an emotional response from him. 

“Oh so you admit that you’re jealous?” I clapped back and I saw Niall's mouth falling open without saying anything. He was speechless for several seconds before he responded: 

“Of course I was! But there’s nothing you could change about it, so I really don’t see why it’s necessary for us to talk about this!”

“Because this is what freaking couples do, Niall!” I started yelling again. “We need to talk about Cameron! And we need to talk about your stupid assistant Cara!”

“Her name is Tara!”, Niall corrected me. 

“Not the fucking point, Niall!”, I yelled back and we stared at each other without saying anything before we both started laughing. Nothing about this was funny, not even in the slightest way, but if felt good to finally hear his laugh again.

We just giggled for several minutes, until we both calmed down and Niall looked at me through the phone, oddly calm now and with a spark in his eye. 

“I’m sorry about how I treated you a few days ago” he said quietly. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t admit that I was jealous. I just really miss you and I can’t handle the fact that someone gets the chance to be close to you, when I don’t.”

“I’m sorry too” I responded softly. “But we need to talk about stuff like this, Niall. This relationship won’t work if we don’t talk about our issues.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I love you, Hails.”

“Love you too” I smiled and he smiled back. 

“I’ll be back in the states in two days” Niall then said. “I wanted to surprise you, but considering the last few days, I thought maybe we could meet and talk about all this stuff and...fuck?” He said the last part with a wide grin and I rolled my eyes, trying to hide a smile. 

“Are you serious right now?”

“What? I heard make up sex is really good” he tried to defend himself and I just couldn’t hold it anymore and started laughing. 

“That’s not what I meant with talking about our issues, Niall!”

“I know, Love.”


	9. No Judgement

I had been anxious all day long. I wanted everything to be perfect for Hailee and I wanted to make up for fighting and making her feel bad. As soon as I had known Hailee would be staying over a few times at my place, I had tried to create a at least kind of homey and cozy atmosphere. I wasn’t staying at that house as often as I did at the apartment in London so it had taken me a longer time to tidy everything up.

I even dressed up a bit for this occasion. I mean it was the first time in over two months I would actually see her in person, hold her and have a real date with her. And Hailee once told me she adored the flannels I had plenty of different colours of, so I couldn’t do anything wrong with just wearing one of them. 

Three careful knocks on my door interrupted my thoughts and my hands started to sweat. I felt like a teenager on his very first date, nervous about most likely embarrassing himself and doing something wrong, even though I knew that in Hailee’s company, I wouldn’t do that. She loved my quirks and I absolutely adored hers. 

I opened my door and took in the sight in front of me. Hailee was wearing one of her summer dresses and she looked gorgeous in it, a bright smile lightening up her entire face.

“Hey love, how have y-”, I started but Hailee cut me off by pressing her lips onto mine in an instant. I would never complain about that so I moved my lips along with hers and wrapped my arms tightly around her waist, eventually lifting her up a bit.

She squealed briefly before tucking the strands of her hair that had fallen into her face back behind her ear again. “I’ve been good so far Niall, what about you? How was the flight?”

“It was okay”, I shrugged my shoulders, “Slept as always I guess.”

Her laughter made me grin as well, I just couldn’t resist this woman in any way. I took her hand and led her inside, closing the door behind her.

“Nice house, it’s a shame that you haven’t brought me here earlier”, Hailee remarked and winked at me as I pulled her closer to me again.

“Couldn’t let my girl stay in a shabby flat, could I?”

“Shut up”, she murmured against my lips before kissing me once again, but even more intense than before. Oh, I had been missing that feeling of her lips on mine, her hands tangled in my hair and inhaling her scent that seemed to intoxicate me.

When Hailee’s hands wandered down my chest and came to a halt directly above my belt, I pulled away briefly and raised an eyebrow at her.

“I thought you wanted to talk?”, I teased her and ran my fingers down her back, feeling her shudder a bit.

“I thought you wanted make up sex?”, she fired back at me and shot me one hell of an innocent gaze that made me groan quietly. I slowly moved my lips to her neck as she began to open the buttons on my flannel. “And besides that you can start by talking about what you thought about when I wasn’t around to have sex with you.”

I gulped and bit softly down on her neck, listening to her quickening breath.

“That’s an easy start on talking, you were most certainly a great inspiration.”

-

“I missed that”, I sighed and pressed a loving kiss to Hailee’s temple while caressing her bare arm.

“Having sex?”, Hailee joked, looking up to me through her lashes. I rolled my eyes and searched for words to say. 

“The intimacy. Just being with you and beside you”, I finally concluded as her lips trailed along my chest. “But the sex too, of course.”

Hailee giggled and nodded. “Me too. I always feel safe and secure just laying in a bed with you and talking about the most random things. And you calm me down and help me not to be anxious.”

Her words released a warm feeling inside my stomach, spreading through my whole body as I felt my heart beat faster. I just hoped she didn’t notice that but knowing Hailee and her eye for the tiniest things, she probably did. So I decided to try to express my feelings to her, for her.

“You feel like home to me”, I admitted and nuzzled my face into her hair. “I can be in fucking New York and I still feel happy as long as you are there with me. And-”

“And what?”, Hailee asked softly, lifting her head to glance at me and caressed through my hair.

“And I really don’t want and can’t imagine being without you again”, I said, my voice barely above a whisper. In that moment, I swore I could see a hint of tears in her eyes but before I could ask her if that had probably been too much too soon, she pressed her lips tightly against mine again before replying: “I feel the same way, Niall. Thank you for opening up to me.”

“Let’s please never fight again like we did a few days ago”, Hailee pleaded as she laid her head down on my chest again.

“We won’t.”, I told her, “And we will FaceTime more often. Or at least call. This time, we will make it work.”

“I hope you know that your Asian and Australian leg of the tour is next”, Hailee reminded me, “I get when it gets too hectic and too-”

“No”, I interrupted her immediately, “I won’t risk us fighting again and I won’t make the same mistake of not talking to you again, I promise.” I stretched out my pinky finger and I saw her lips turning up in a smile before intertwining our fingers.

“Promise”, Hailee mumbled before clearing her throat awkwardly, “Just so you know, I don’t actually hate Tara or something. I just mildly dislike her sometimes because I get the feeling she throws herself at you as soon as I am not there.”

My thoughts wandered to Tara. I understood that one could get the impression that she was doing that. Tara and I developed a close friendship over the little time she had been working for me and her as well as I were people that were not afraid to physically show their vis-à-vis how much we liked them. Friends as well as boy- and girlfriends. I would never start a relationship with Tara because she was working for me after all and I would also never ever cheat on Hailee or betray her in any way.

“Should I subtly tell her exactly that?”, I asked carefully, but Hailee shook her head.

“Just try to tone it down a bit, she will catch on”

An involuntary laugh left my lips and I was relieved that she grinned as well.

“Don’t worry, I won’t be seeing Cameron for a long time as well now, and I am going to make sure he is not going to tag along the next time, I will cancel if he does”, Hailee told me but this time it was my turn to shake my head.

“Hails, I trust you. I might not trust Chase-”, I caught Hailee rolling her eyes at the name but she couldn’t help but smile, “but that shouldn’t affect how you spend your time with your friends. You barely see them and I am not going to be the reason that it gets even less. And I also don’t judge you for hanging with your ex, as long as it’s not alone.”

“And I won’t judge you for spending that much time with your assistant, even if it annoys me sometimes”, Hailee answered as I kissed the top of her head swiftly.

“I love you, Hails”

“I love you too Niall”

After a short but comfortable silence, she glanced at me again, shielding her bare body from the air that had gotten a bit cold because of the AC.

“No offense, I love laying here with you and enjoying your company but you said something about a date on the phone?”

“I thought about doing something completely different today”, I explained and ran my thumb down her cheek, “What about spending the day doing what we’ve always wanted to do but never really had time for?”

Her face lit up at my words. “I like how you think Horan, and I wanted to stay in anyways.”

For a couple of seconds, she seemed to get lost in thoughts before grinning. “I just want to order lots of junk food. Everything that’s imaginable, from main course to dessert.”

“Let’s do it then”, I smiled and unlocked my phone.

-

“Do you already know what you want to do next?”, I asked my girlfriend as I looked at her before laughing. Hailee held a pizza slice over her head and tried to capture the cheese with her tongue but failed as the grease dripped down from her chin.

“Dunno, what do you think?”, she answered, her mouth full with a generous bite of the slice.

“I thought about taking a bath together? Like I would really enjoy that and haven’t done it in ages”, I said dipping my index finger in some mousse au chocolat.

“Only if it contains drinking a bottle of red wine together”, Hailee decided and got up from the bed, “And I am full, I don’t think I can eat for the next two weeks.”

I laughed at her before sliding off my shirt I had thrown over my upper body to greet the delivery guy.

“Not that I am complaining, but what are you doing?”, Hailee grinned up to me and I shrugged my shoulders. 

“Getting ready for that bath I guess, let me get the wine”

But she obviously had something other in mind as suddenly water soaked my trousers and splashed against my bare back.

“What the hell?”, I turned around to see that Hailee had emptied a complete bottle over me, “You are going to regret that!”

I only heard her squeal and ran away to my garden, I believed. I stormed into the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of wine and one filled with water and followed after her. My eyes scanned the green bushes and it didn’t take me long to figure out where she was hiding. Before she could react, I splashed the entirety of the water over her head, causing her to shriek. 

“I need a break!”, she gasped and pulled her dress over her head. I watched her amusedly and raised an eyebrow.

“Are you putting on a show for me, Hails?”

“Potentially”, she grinned and motioned to my pants, “but I won’t continue if you won’t get rid of your trousers.”

“You’re way too intelligent”, I laughed, laid the bottle of wine beside me and took them off.

Before I even realized it, Hailee reached forward, grabbed the wine bottle and poured some of it over my head. I gasped, looking at her wide-eyed which made her laugh even harder.

“That wine was actually expensive”, I mock-complained, looking down on me and watching the red liquor running down my body and soaking my boxers.

“No judgement”, she replied and kissed me passionately.

When she wasn’t paying attention, I took the bottle from her and emptied the rest over her. Hailee gazed at me in playful disbelief as I shrugged my shoulders.

“No judgement, I guess”, I told her before attaching my lips to her neck, “but I got to make at least some good use of the wine.”

“I am not complaining”, she replied, wrapping her arms around my waist.

-

“We’ve made the best out of this day”, I remarked and pulled Hailee closer to me in the bathtub. We decided to get rid of the rest of the wine on our bodies together and a bath was something we had planned on having before.

“Practically the only thing we’ve been doing is talking, eating and having sex in every room downstairs”, Hailee giggled and turned around a bit to look at me.

I grinned at her before saying: “I call that making the best out of a day.”

“I haven’t had a good bath in so long, I never find enough time during my usual working schedule.”, Hailee told me and intertwined our hands underwater.

“Me neither but we should do it more often, I quite like it”, I rested my chin on her shoulders and drew circles on the back of her hand.

“Thank you for this day, it was truly one of the best dates I have ever had”


	10. Wrong Direction

I knew which song was coming next. It had been out for a couple of months by now, but I had always managed to avoid it, I had never felt ready to hear what he had to say. So I paused the music and took a couple of deep breaths. This was going to be hard. I never knew how he had felt after our falling out, I had never wanted to know. Listening to him singing about our history up to this point had been hard, hurtful and even crucial, but I had managed somehow, because I had known what was about to come. But now? Now I was blind, because I really didn’t know what had been going on in Niall’s life ever since. 

Just when I felt ready and wanted to press play, my phone started to ring. 

It was my friend Jonathan. 

“Hey, what’s up?”, I picked up, trying to sound normal and not like I have just cried for thirty minutes straight.

“Hey, are you listening to the radio?” Jonathan asked excitedly, but I denied. 

“You have to turn it on! They are playing  _ Wrong Direction _ !” It felt like something inside of me just broke. 

“Oh wow, that’s great,” I said without a motion on my face. “Thanks for telling me, I’ll check it out.”

“Everything okay?” Jonathan wondered and I swallowed hard. 

“Yeah, perfectly fine. I’ll talk to you later” and I hung up on him before he could answer. 

Something in my chest where my heart was supposed to be clenched around a dark hole of nothing. It felt so empty. Because I remembered writing every single word of this song. And I remembered meaning every single word while crying my heart out. 

Because I really couldn’t hate him. But I hated all the pain he had caused. I hated how he had ruined everything without even blinking an eyelid. 

-

My heart skipped a beat when I saw Niall’s name popping up on my screen. He had been on tour for two weeks now and even though the different time zones had been difficult to handle, we had made it work. Every two or three days we tried to clear our morning or evening to talk to each other for a couple of hours. I did have to cancel on my friends two or three times and Niall did dodge his crew a couple of times when they wanted to go out and drink after a concert, but it had been a sacrifice we both had been more than willing to make. 

But right now it was midday and I had a break from filming. And him calling right now could only mean one thing. He was back in Los Angeles. Finally. 

“Hey Babe”, I said through the speaker while I locked the phone between my cheek and my shoulder and walked down the set. “You’re back?”

“I’m back” he confirmed and I could hear his grin through the phone. I also started to grin. 

“Finally” I said what I just thought minutes ago. “I can’t wait to see you again.”

“Yeah, me too”, he replied softly. “Are you in LA right now?”

“Nope, still in San Francisco, but I’ll be back in two days or so,” I lied. I would be back by tomorrow morning, but I wanted to surprise him. Treat him to a delicious breakfast. 

“Oh”, he said and sounded a bit disappointed. “Alright, I kind of hoped you’d be free tonight. I’m having some people from the crew over for a little ‘have a nice break’ party and I had hoped you would be there as well.”

“I’m sorry Niall” I said and really meant it. I wish I could be there today. Meet some of the people I had heard so many stories about. But I’ve already pushed some appointments around to be able to leave one day earlier, so there really was no chance of leaving right now. 

“No worries, Hails. It’s only one evening”, Niall said and it sounded like he was smiling again. “I still have two weeks off and I fully intend on spending every single second of those two weeks with my lovely girlfriend.”

“Really? Who is she? Have I met her before?”, I teased and I could basically hear him rolling his eyes. 

“Don’t you have to work?” he joked and I checked my watch, only to realise that I was indeed already ten minutes late. 

“Oh, shit, I have to go, Niall.”

He laughed out loud. “Alright, see ya in two days yeah? Love you.”

“Love you too”, I replied before I hung up. 

-

I got out of the taxi, waving to the taxi driver with one hand, a bag filled with delicious breakfast from a bakery in the other. I got back from San Francisco early this morning. My assistant took my luggage and my car while I took a taxi directly to Niall. Well not directly, I had made one stop to grab some food for us. I had been fidgy the whole ride and now I was here I couldn’t wait to wrap my arms around Niall. 

He hadn’t responded to any of my texts so far and I really hoped he wasn’t still asleep. 

I was walking down the path to Nialls door when I heard two voices. Two voices? Confused stopped walking and looked around. Niall was standing next to the door and right next to him was - . I gulped. 

Next to him was Tara. Tara, looking like she just got out of bed, her hair just as messy as Niall’s were and she was wearing one of his shirts. I knew it was one of his because I was the one who had bought it for him. 

I stepped a few steps to the left, so they couldn’t see me that well and tried to understand what they were saying. 

“- really funny.” Niall just said. “We defo should do that again.” I heard her laugh and my heart started to clench. Calm down, I told myself. This didn’t have to mean anything. Maybe they were just talking about the evening in general. Maybe everyone had slept at Niall’s place. His house was really big, he would have enough space for everyone. 

But while I was trying to calm myself down I saw Tara leaning forward and kissing Niall on the cheek. What was going on here? 

Before I could even start to keep myself calming down and try to tell me that this kiss didn’t have to mean anything, that it could've been a simple kind gesture between two friends, I heard Niall's voice again.

“Please don’t tell Hailee about this, yeah? Everything is going so well between us, I don’t want to ruin this.”

_ Please don’t tell Hailee about this _ . This sentence was echoing in my head. I felt numb. Unable to even hear Tara’s answer. I didn’t feel the soft breeze blowing through my hair, I didn’t feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, I didn’t hear the birds singing in the tree. All I heard was Niall’s sentence. 

He did something he didn’t want me to know about because it would ruin our relationship. That was basically a confession. I knew what had happened in this house last night and I felt the urge to throw up. How could I’ve been so stupid? I had always known something was going on there, but I had tried to ignore the gut feeling in my stomach, because I loved this fucking idiot over there! 

I needed to get out of here! I couldn’t handle seeing his face right now. I needed to figure out what to do next, I needed to sort my thoughts and most importantly I needed to cry somewhere Niall couldn’t see me. I didn’t want to give him the triumph of seeing how much he had managed to hurt me. 

But before I could even start walking or even make a plan, Tara appeared next to me out of nowhere. Apparently I also hadn’t realised that she was leaving and now had found me. 

“Oh, shit”, she gasped loudly and I immediately spun around to look in Niall’s wide eyes, staring at us in shock. 

“Hailee, I thought you’d be here tomorrow?” Niall said, trying to sound casual. Two things happened after this sentence. My heart felt like it started to bleed and Tara next to me stared at Niall in disbelief as if she couldn’t believe what he just said. 

“I think I’ll leave the two of you alone”, she mumbled and left. I didn’t look after her. I didn’t care about her. I only cared about Niall, who was still staring at me, with panic in his eyes. 

“Hailee, what -” he started, but interrupted himself, obviously overwhelmed with the situation. 

“Should we go inside?” he asked meekly but I still physically wasn’t able to respond. My body slowly stopped feeling numb. Instead a hurting fire spread inside of me and I knew I couldn’t hold it back for much longer. I needed to get out of here.

“Hailee, come on” he tried again and stepped closer. He slowly approached me and reached out for my hand. His touch felt like a slap in the face. Suddenly I was able to move again and my hand flinched away from his touch. 

“Don’t touch me” I hissed. “I could throw up, knowing where those hands have been, so don’t you dare touch me with these hands!”

He looked at me in shock. “Hails…”

“Don’t call me that!” I yelled and he flinched away as if I had punched him in the face. 

“It’s not what you think it is…” he tried again, but I really wasn’t having it. 

“I don’t care about your excuses, Horan! I don’t wanna hear your voice anymore! How could you do this to me?” I turned around, wanting to leave, but before I could even start to walk, Niall grabbed my shoulders tightly and turned me around. 

His face was so close now, I could easily kiss him if I wanted to. But I couldn’t. Not anymore. Tears started to fill my eyes. I lowered my gaze and started to tremble. “Please, let me go,” I whispered. Right now I didn’t even care about him seeing my weakness, I just wanted to go. 

“You once said that this relationship wouldn’t work if we didn’t talk about our issues, so please, listen to me, let me explain this situation! It’s not what it looks like, I promise. We’ve been through so much and I love you, Hailee! Please, I don’t want to lose you.” I could hear his voice breaking. “Not because of a stupid misunderstanding. Look at me, please” he begged. Quietly he repeated ‘I don’t want to lose you’ over and over again, his body trembling and his hands on my shoulders shaking, until I finally looked up. 

His face was wet and those beautiful blue eyes I loved so much were shiny. He tried to hold back a sob when our eyes connected and raised his hand to caress my cheek. He looked just as heartbroken as I felt. But he deserved it, I didn’t. He cheated on me, after promising me that nothing was going on between him and her. He promised that he would never hurt me. He promised me that he would love me for the rest of his life, that this would last forever. But he lied. He had shattered all my hopes and all our dreams, because he just couldn’t keep his hands off of Tara. So I looked him in the eyes and said quietly: 

“You did already lose me.”

And without looking back I turned around, leaving him there, standing in front of his house, knowing that I had lost him forever.

-

I felt the tears drying on my cheeks. I had started to cry without even realising it. I had been so sure that I got over this boy, over this experience, after releasing this song. It was intended to be some kind of closure for me, to move forward and leave this hurtful time of my life behind, but apparently it didn’t work. 

I missed him. Every fiber in my body yearned for his touch, my ears had missed the sound of his voice and it felt like there was nothing in this world to make me feel better but his comfort. I missed every single bit about him and I hadn’t realised it until listening to my own song about him. 

Suddenly I wanted to know everything. I wanted, needed, to know what really had happened, needed to know the full story. This time I didn’t hesitate when I pressed play and for the first time ever I heard the tunes of  _ Put a Little Love on Me _ .


	11. Put a Little Love on Me

“The hangout yesterday was really funny. We defo should do that again”, I grinned at Tara and brushed my unmade hair back.

Yesterday truly had been amazing. We had celebrated being almost done with the tour and had talked a lot about the awesome memories we had made so far. The night had been filled with alcohol, dancing and playing music. I had found real friends over the past few months and I was more than grateful for that. 

Tara got on her tiptoes and briefly pressed her lips to my cheek. “Thank you again for letting me stay, I would’ve been terrified if I had had to go home on my own!”, she mumbled.

“Please don’t tell Hailee about this, yeah? Everything is going so well between us, I don’t want to ruin this.”, I replied and looked her serious in the eye, “But no problem, you can crash in my guestroom any time.”

I looked down at her and pointed to my shirt she was currently wearing. “And I really need the shirt back, okay? It’s very important to me”

It had gotten really late last night and the other guests had either gone home earlier or didn’t live that far away from my house, contrary to Tara. I hadn’t been willing to let her cross the entire city in order to reach her hotel at 3am, so I had been insisting that she had had to stay at mine. But I also knew what Hailee would think about this and she wouldn’t be happy at all, so it was probably the best thing if she didn’t know about it at all. And I had given the shirt to her because someone had poured a drink over her dress and I wasn’t going to let her leave with that massive stain on her clothes.

“Sure, don’t worry Niall. Although Hailee should really get over this thing, it’s getting more and more ridiculous. I don’t date younger men, you and I both know that.”, Tara joked but I sent her a warning glance. “But I gotta go, see you in a few days!”

“See ya”, I replied as Tara walked out the door but suddenly backed up.

“Oh shit”

I looked around the corner to see my girlfriend standing there, a day earlier than anticipated and seeming as if someone had ripped her heart out of her chest.  _ Shit, what did she hear and see? _

“Hailee, I thought you’d be here tomorrow”, I said, trying to sound as casual as possible to find out what the real issue was. Both women glared at me in utter disbelief but Hailee’s gaze was mixed with hurt and shock.

“I think I’ll leave the two of you alone”, Tara shook her head and waved at me as she left my property.

Hailee’s and my eyes met and in that exact moment, I knew that the next five minutes would probably be the most hurtful in my life so far. There was no emotion and close to every possible negative one in them all at once. Her face was so pale that I thought about asking her to sit down but that would probably be inappropriate right now. I needed to know what was going on inside her head but judging her facial expression, she wasn’t going to tell me. 

After the realization that I had obviously fucked up big time without even knowing what I had exactly done, I tried talking to her. I tried everything that I was capable of doing at the moment. Multiple times, I started with an explanation but she cut me off every single time, not wanting to listen to anything I had to say. Slowly, the fear of actually losing her grew more and more in me and spread throughout my whole body before consuming my mind entirely. I was shaking, I begged her to please let me explain just for a minute and finally I broke down and began to cry because I couldn’t hold back the tears that were burning in the corners of my eyes any longer.

Every second of our conversation felt surreal and like I was in a haze, I wasn’t even able to comprehend what was happening right in front of me. I was positive that she could sense the desperation and sadness radiating off me but it seemed like she just didn’t want to see it. I had never seen Hailee like this before, acting stone-cold and I had never been treated like that by her before, not even when she had seen the pictures of Tara and I.

My mind started spinning and I felt like I needed to throw up. I tried gently touching her, waking her up somehow to make her see that she was behaving unreasonable and we only needed to talk this stupid misunderstanding out, but it seemed like she was completely out of my reach and escaped me every time I had the feeling I had somehow grasped her again.

When the implication of cheating fell from her lips, I was paralyzed. Did she seriously think that she just caught Tara and I in the middle of something? Had it seriously sounded and seemed like we were going behind her back? Hailee out of all people should know best that I could never hurt her intentionally, let alone cheat on her. She seemed so disgusted by my hands on her that she flinched away immediately. 

I told her multiple times I didn’t want to lose her. It sounded like a mantra but if I had been completely sure that there wasn’t paparazzi waiting around the next corner I would have even shouted it out loud. Because I loved her. I loved her so much. All I wanted was to protect my relationship and from how she behaved the only possible explanation for her thinking I had cheated on her was that she had simply heard the wrong parts at the wrong time and had put those parts together into a completely false picture.

Desperately, I tried to convince her, tears staining my cheeks and blurring my vision.

“You did already lose me”, Hailee told me, glaring me dead in the eyes and turning around before I could even react quickly enough. I had to watch her leaving my property and hurriedly disappear behind the bushes.

I felt numb. Had I really just lost her? I couldn’t wrap my mind around the pure imagination that she wouldn’t be there anymore to kiss me awake, to cheer me on on tour, to simply comfort me and laugh with me.

As quickly as my feet could carry me, I hurried inside and slammed the door shut before sinking against it and letting my tears flow freely, my quiet sobs being the only sound filling the silence in my house.

-

The next four days didn’t even feel like I was alive. I could barely sleep so I laid awake every night until about 3 to 4am, reading past text messages Hailee and I had sent and sent her some more. If there wasn’t a way to talk to her in person, at least I needed to try via the messengers we used, Instagram, Snapchat and calls. She didn’t pick up once during those four days, she didn’t answer any of my messages and on the morning of the fourth day I realized that she had blocked me on any possible application so I couldn’t contact her anymore.

In contrast to that many different people tried to reach me. I ignored Tara, the members of my band and my friends asking how the break in between the tour legs was going. Nobody seemed to know what was going on and I felt relieved because of it. I couldn’t deal with the media and its speculations right now, not when I, myself, wasn’t capable of grasping what I was going through. And that I had lost the love of my life.

Hailee and I hadn’t been to my house in Los Angeles that often but the smallest things seemed to remind me of her. The way she would dance around to almost every song in the living room and eventually making me dance with her. Her sitting on my kitchen counter while I was making breakfast beside her and pressing her lips to my hair from time to time. Me wrapping my arms around her from behind in the garden as she was watching the birds between the leaves of the trees outside. Her sitting next to me on the sofa while I was playing some tunes and singing along. Her simply being there and filling the void, not only in my house but also in my heart. 

And now that void was back but it was consuming me entirely, not only my heart. I felt nothing, empty and numb but at the same time heartbroken, desperate and sad. I didn’t want to see anyone but her. I needed her. But she wasn’t mine anymore and there was nothing that could possibly make her change her mind again. 

Whenever I laid in bed, it would get worse. The thoughts and memories flooded back into my head and feeling so real like I could turn around and caress her shoulder. Sometimes I even thought that her scent was still lingering in my rooms but I was probably going crazy. The good luck charm she had gifted me a few months ago, a stuffed elephant, was constantly laying next to me as if it could somehow bring her back. 

After two days of crying and sobbing when she would read my messages but not respond I felt like I had spent all of my tears. I just stared at the wall, seeing her in front of my eyes or at the TV, not even watching but simply to have background sound to make the silence disappear. 

And I listened to lots of music. Music was my escape I could pour all of my feelings into. At first I was barely playing some myself; I was rather listening to other artists but on the third day, I started playing my guitar and the piano again, only producing sad melodies. I wondered what Hailee was doing, with whom and how she felt. Was she okay? Was she just as broken as I was? Did she think about me? Was she with Cameron? I couldn’t even think about it without feeling the urge to vomit. Did she miss my calls?

After the first two days, Tara had already tried to reach me. She could obviously put two and two together to understand that something must have gone wrong. It wasn’t exactly surprising when the doorbell rang in the afternoon of the fourth day. At first, I debated to just ignore her because she obviously couldn’t get past my door without me opening but her knocks grew louder and more intense by the second.

I sighed and opened, staring at Tara.

“What-”, she interrupted herself and took a closer look at me, “Why are you looking like this?! And you stink! When was the last shower you took?”

But when I didn’t respond to anything she had just asked me, her glance changed from angry to worried.

“Is everything okay, Niall?”

“Come in.” My voice sounded raspy and tired as I took a step aside and gestured her in.

“Did anything happen after I left a few days ago?”

So she already knew what was wrong and just came to confirm it.

“H- She broke up with me”, I replied, not able to use her name in this sentence. It hurt too bad.

“Why? Did you fight? But not because of me, did you?”, Tara sounded shocked and surprised to say the least.

I laughed roughly and cleared my throat. “Not exactly. She thinks-”, I sighed and shook my head, bringing it down to my hands. “She thinks that you and I-”

“Please don’t tell me she thinks you’ve cheated on her”, Tara ended the sentence for me, seeing that I struggled to find words. She knew I couldn’t talk about feelings that well and that I also wasn’t in the mood to.

I simply nodded and stared at the wall and felt like crying but no tears dared to fall down. It seemed like I had already used every single one of them up.

“But why didn’t you talk to her? Tell her that she misunderstood?”

“Because she wouldn’t let me”, I answered shortly, being annoyed by the questions she asked me. That was exactly why I wanted to deal with everything by myself. 

“Okay, the next two things I am going to tell you won’t make you happy and you probably also don’t want to listen but, first of all, if Hailee doesn’t let you speak and tell her what the truth is and if she’s shut you out of every aspect of her life, she’s not worth crying over.”

The words hit me like a wall as I suddenly turned my head to stare at her in disbelief.

“Did you seriously came all the way to tell me this?”, I yelled, watching her flinch but clearing her throat a few seconds after my outburst to carry on.

“If she is not willing to let you explain and share your side of the story, she is also not willing to work on your relationship and put as much effort in it as you did. That is my opinion and it’s a fact, so don’t look at me that way.”

I turned my head away and buried my face in my hands. Apparently, there were tears left but I didn’t want Tara to see them. She only knew me as the happy guy and it should stay that way.

“The second thing I came to tell you is, that no matter how hard this situation is for you right now, the show must go on. I have to tell you this as your personal assistant, not as your friend so please don’t be mad at me”, Tara quietly said and I could feel her hand rubbing over my back. “Every staff member, from your crew to your band to me, are waiting for you. The next concert is going to be in nine days and until then, we need to practise and see you on stage. We can’t cancel the upcoming concerts, you know it as well as I do.”

I wiped the tears off my face before looking at her again. Tara glanced at me compassionately and even though I hated that look, I couldn't blame her. I probably looked like a mess.

“Media is going to have a field day as soon as they find out something happened between you two, and if you start cancelling concerts, the outcome is going to be even worse.”

A short silence engulfed us, only the steady breaths of both of us to be heard until I sighed and quietly said: “Tara, I don’t want to be rude but please leave. I can’t- I cannot-”

The words wouldn’t come out but Tara didn’t seem like she needed me to say anything at all. She simply nodded, understood and pressed a brief kiss to my temple.

“Try to be there for the rehearsal tomorrow, okay?”, she whispered and as I didn’t react for a few seconds, she stood up and left; I could hear the door falling shut.

I was alone again, my head full of thoughts. Hailee didn’t deserve me? I didn’t seem to have done a good job as a boyfriend to be honest.  _ If she is not willing to let you explain and share your side of the story, she is also not willing to work on your relationship and put as much effort in it as you did.  _ I repeated that sentence over and over again in my head before I grabbed my phone and unlocked it.

Scrolling through the messages, I felt the desperation flickering in me again so I threw my phone onto the other side of the couch. Tara was right. I needed to get my shit back together, even though I missed Hailee like crazy. I should get used to the feeling because four days ago, it had been the last time I would’ve spoken to her and I knew it. It was over.


	12. Nothing

I wasn’t crying when _ Put a Little Love on Me _ came to an end. I was a sobbing mess. My cheeks were covered in tears, even my shirt got soaked. My hands were shaking and my lips trembling as I paused the music and grabbed my phone. 

I had to scroll down a lot, I hadn’t called this number in ages. When I finally found the name I was looking for, I pressed to call without thinking twice about it. I needed to know. I needed answers and this was the only way I could think of right now to get them. 

It started to ring and I nervously bit on my lip while I waited for a response. When someone finally picked up, my hands started to shake again. 

“Hailee?” a familiar voice said. I hadn’t heard that voice in what felt like forever. I hadn’t thought that I would ever hear this voice again. 

I let out a shaky breath before I answered: “He didn’t cheat on me, did he?”

Julia fell silent for a few seconds, obviously taken aback by my forward question. “No, he didn't,” she finally sighed sadly and another sob came out of my mouth. 

“Why have you never told me anything?” I wanted to know. I couldn’t stop crying. 

“Because you never wanted to talk about it” Julia responded and sighed. “Whenever we tried to say something about it, you locked us out. You were so determined to get over him and to forget him, you never realised what was really going on. You hurt him. A lot.” she added and I could feel my heart break at her words. I had hurt him. He didn’t do anything wrong. It was my fault that we weren’t together anymore. It was my fault that he had to go through all those hurtful emotions he was now singing about and it was my own fault that I lost the most important person in my life. 

“I’m so stupid” I said out loud, this time without a sob. I just felt numb. Empty. Stupid. 

“Are you listening to the album?” Julia asked carefully. 

“Yeah” I sighed. “Still a few more to go though. Can’t wait to hear him singing how he got over my stupid face.”

Julia first didn’t respond, then she said: “Just listen to the album. Figure out what you want, try to figure out what he wants. It’s pretty obvious to be honest.”

“Can’t you just tell me?” I begged. I couldn’t handle listening to him singing about his broken heart anymore. Not knowing what I knew. That it was my fault. I had always blamed him for not talking about his feelings and dealing with them through songs and I had always thought that in the end this had been one of the reasons why we didn’t work out. But that wasn't the case. Even though it was hard for him to talk about emotions, he had tried to do exactly that. For me. For us. But I pushed him away, didn’t want to listen to his explanations and left him without even giving him the chance to say something. I had acted against my own principles and now I had to live with the consequences. 

“Listen to the album, Hailee,” Julia simply said. “Trust me.” I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me. 

After that we hung up and I sank down on the floor in front of my couch. I wasn’t sure if I could handle anything more, but I still pressed on play. 

-

It’s been a few months now since Niall and I broke up and I finally stopped thinking about him on a daily basis. I still thought of him from time to time, but usually it didn’t hurt as bad as it did right after the break up. 

Today was my birthday and I was eager to spend this day with as many friends as possible to make sure I didn’t slip in a bad mood. 

Maybe he would even text me. It was my birthday. 

Kennedi picked me up around 10am for a breakfast date with some of our friends. It was nice. I haven’t seen them for a while now and it was nice to catch up. 

“So, how was your trip to Italy?” Kennedi asked Georgina while she reached out for a strawberry. 

“It was so beautiful,” Georgina started. “We went to so many beautiful places. Everyone was so nice, the food was delicious and I loved the dreamy, cozy atmosphere. They just live a completely different life than we do.”

“Sounds lovely” I smiled at her and she smiled back. “It’s also really romantic. You should go there with -”

“Georgina!” Kennedi snapped at her and glanced at me with a suspicious look.

“It’s alright” I tried to smile and took a sip from my coffee. The other four girls all looked at me, unsure what to say and I turned to Emma, trying to ease the tension. “What are you getting your brother for Christmas? I can’t find anything for mine, please give me some inspiration!”

For the next few minutes I had to listen to Emma discussing her Christmas presents while I felt Kennedi looking at me every once in a while. 

-

The music was loud and I had to yell at the bartender for him to understand my order. I had had dinner with my family and after that my brother and I had left to go and meet some friends in the club. Around thirty people were there, everyone sang Happy Birthday for me and cheered when I blew out the candles. But I couldn’t help but think that something was missing. Someone was missing. 

I thought it was a good idea to get distracted by drinking more and more Tequila-Shots. But it didn’t work. Quite the opposite actually. Whenever I reached out for my glass I expected a hand to appear on my waist, expected a head with fluffy, brown hair appearing next to me, expected a raspy voice in my ear asking if I wanted another drink. But he never came. Because we broke up. 

Because he broke my heart.

Sighing I downed another drink and wanted to spin around, when I started to tumble. Obviously I was drunker than I thought I was. 

Suddenly I felt a hand on my hip and my heart started to race. Was it Niall? Did he come to celebrate my birthday? Maybe we could work everything out, maybe we - 

It wasn’t Niall. 

The hand was too small, the grip too hard. I turned around and looked in the eyes of Cameron. 

“Hey, drunkie, happy birthday” he grinned down at me and leaned in for a hug. Immediately I stepped back, trying to avoid his touch. 

“What do you want here?” I asked. 

“Celebrate my friend’s birthday” he replied and stepped closer again. I felt the bar pressing against my back and I looked over Cameron’s shoulder, searching for Kennedi or my brother. 

“We’re not friends, Cameron” I clarified coldly and Cameron just laughed.

“Oh shut it, Hailee, is this still about this ridiculous boy band guy you had a crush on? I thought you were over this phase.”

“He’s not a phase, Cameron” I hissed. “You were!”

“A phase?” Cameron laughed. “C’mon you never called me a phase when you hooked up with me whenever you got drunk and lonely.” He stepped even closer and finally I saw my brother on the other side of the room. “Don’t you feel drunk and lonely?” Cameron whispered. “C’mon, I know you want to.”

“I don’t want to do anything with you, fuck off!” I yelled and apparently Griffin heard me because he looked up and I saw the frown on his face. ‘Help’ I mouthed and Griffin immediately started to walk over. I turned back to Cameron. 

“You mean nothing to me! You hear? Nothing! I don’t care about you, I don’t want to see you and I don’t even want to talk to you! You were a terrible boyfriend, I faked more orgasms for you than I could count and you fucking suck at being a decent human being! You mean nothing to me! There’s only one person I love and that’s.... Griffin” I said when my brother stepped next to Cameron and laid a hand on his shoulder. 

“I think you need to back off, dude” Griffin said calmly, but I could sense his anger. 

“We were just talking,” Cameron replied and grinned widely. 

“And now you’re not talking anymore. Back off.” 

Cameron looked at me one last time, mumbled a ‘you’re going to regret this, Hailee’ and left. 

“Thank you” I said and smiled up to my brother.

“C’mon, Hailee, let’s get you to bed” Griffin said, lifted me up and walked over to the exit. 

“I think I still love him G”, I mumbled tiredly into his shoulder, I had already closed my eyes. 

“I know, H. Sleep” he replied and I did just that. 

-

I knew  _ Nothing _ wasn’t about this evening. It couldn’t be, because Niall knew nothing about it. He hadn’t been there. But it fit so perfectly. I should have known it back then. That I had made a mistake. It had been months and I still had missed him like hell. I should have known. 

But I knew better now. Julia had said that I had to figure out what I wanted. And I knew it. I wanted him. I needed him. Back in my life, back next to me in my bed to wake up to his fluffy hair and his raspy voice. I needed his warmth and his soft touches to calm me down and I needed his laughter to make me truly happy. 

But I wasn’t sure if I could get that. Maybe he didn’t feel the same anymore. He most certainly didn’t. 

I knew how to figure it out though. It was all on his album, just like Julia said it would be. I just had to listen. Five more songs and everything would be out there. No secrets, no lies, just the truth. After that I would know if I still had a chance or if everything was lost. 

I had always been scared of the songs, always had a gut feeling in my stomach when the next song started to play. But not this time. I was calm and ready. I could do this. I had to. To get him back.


	13. Dress

I got out of the cab, thanked the driver again and looked up my apartment complex. Finally home again! London was practically glowing in spring and coming back after such a long time of nothing but promo and interviews, it felt great to be in a familiar environment again.

Not that I didn’t like being on the road, it was quite the opposite but there’s always something missing. Something familiar, something to hold on to when the crowd and people who are interested in you as a singer are gone and there’s nothing but silence surrounding you after a show or an interview.  _ Or someone familiar?  _

I banned the thought from my mind and fished out my keys from my pocket and let myself in. After taking the elevator up to my floor, I basically burst through the door in happiness. Home. I had quite missed it.

I let my bags fall without care and laid down on my sofa, closing my eyes for a few seconds and enjoying the familiar environment. But after only approximately five minutes of soothing silence and relaxing, my phone rang. I let out a frustrated groan before reaching for it beside me and picking up.

“Hey mate”, Greg Kurstin answered and I couldn’t help but grin. One of my favourite songwriters of all time for sure. He had worked with me on a few of my songs and we always shared that same kind of dynamic when it came to songwriting.

“What’s up?” I asked and sat up on the couch.

“Nothing much, life’s going great so far”, Greg replied and I could hear him shuffling around in the background, “What about you?”

“I am also doing great”, I said, even though that was probably only partly true. “Just came back to London!”

“Yeah, a little birdie told me”, Greg laughed, “which brings me to why I’m actually calling.”

“So you’re not really interested in my life?”, I joked which only caused Greg to laugh even more.

“Sorry lad, that came out wrong. But I am also in the city and was wondering if you were up to a bit of jamming and maybe songwriting if the vibe fits?”

“That would be great”, I answered, even though I was really looking forward to spending the rest of the day on the couch, “what time do you want to meet up?”

“Let’s say two hours? Is that enough time for you to get ready, princess?”, Greg teased and I rolled my eyes.

“I’ll meet you there”

After ending the call, all the stuff I still needed to do before leaving was running through my mind. Two hours actually weren’t a lot. I groaned quietly and picked up my bags from the hallway, dragging them to my bedroom. I dropped them there again and quickly got fresh clothes out of my wardrobe as well as a towel before going to have a shower.

When I felt refreshed and clean enough, I decided that something to eat wouldn’t be the worst idea because jamming with Greg meant staying for a few hours. I didn’t really have any fresh ingredients to actually cook but it would be certainly enough to have pasta with a simple tomato sauce. 

Shortly before I already needed to leave again, my glance fell to my bags still laying on the floor completely untouched. I groaned but let’s be honest; who likes living out of suitcases if you don’t have to? So I decided to at least start unpacking and maybe being five to ten minutes late.

I opened the first one and stepped over it in order to be able to open the door of my wardrobe. It looked like a real mess in there; some dress shirts or jackets were stuffed in there without even being put on a hanger. I wasn’t the most organized or neat guy out there but I couldn’t help but take all of the clothes in my arms and throw them onto the ground next to the bags. This practically screamed ‘tidy me up” and I hadn’t bothered to in too long.

I picked up the first few dress shirts and directly tossed them into the hamper because trying to wear them again without washing them would be useless. I had time to go over a few other pieces until my finger brushed a strange material.

I knew exactly that there was no way in hell I wore something made out of velvet, I would’ve remembered. I dragged the piece of clothing out from between the others and stared directly at a dress that was most certainly not mine. 

The dark red colour and the soft material already vaguely reminded me of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on but as soon as I realized that it was a dress, my heart dropped.

Hailee.

It felt like I spaced out completely as I saw vivid memories in front of my eyes. Her and I in an incredibly expensive restaurant, not only enjoying the food but also the amazing view of the skyline of London. And me not only enjoying the view outside but also the one in front of me. Hectically getting in the cab afterwards because we weren’t able to keep our hands to ourselves anymore. Barely opening the door before starting to heavily make out and finally landing on my bed. I could almost feel her touching my upper arms and my fingertips caressing her sides through that dress I currently held in my hands.

I sat on the floor in complete silence, not being able to move or to think straight as memories flashed in front of my inner eye. And suddenly, the numb void that was engulfing me was changing rapidly. It was being replaced by something I didn’t really experience that often but it was heavy anger. It was currently May and we had split almost a year ago, why wouldn’t the thought of her leave me alone?

I crumbled the dress in my hands before tossing it against the wall and getting up hurriedly. I wasn’t only going to be at least twenty minutes late, but also furious and absolutely not in the mood for spending a chill evening with a friend.

-

“Hoi mate! Thought you’d never show up!”

Greg sounded pretty excited and already got up in an attempt to hug me but I just nodded in his direction and let myself fall onto the couch.

“Give me a few seconds, okay man?” I quietly asked because I also felt bad for treating him like that without any obvious reason, at least to him.

“Are you okay, Niall?” 

I looked up at the sound of the familiar female voice and sent Julia a brief smile.

“I’ve probably been better but it’s not worth talking about”, I admitted and sighed. “Just give me another five minutes and I’ll be all yours.”

“If it’s making you this frustrated, you should probably talk about it.”, Julia advised me quietly, “You seem really upset.”

I sighed and hid my face in my hands. “I’ve talked enough about that subject. And believe me, nothing seems to help, not even talking.”

Julia scrunched her eyebrows and Greg looked away awkwardly. I had written songs with him about Hailee before so I supposed that he knew where this was going. 

“It’s Hailee”, I finally said, “everything just kinda blew up in my face today and now I’m angry and frustrated that she won’t get out of my head and keeps ruining days for me and I noticed that I-”, I sighed briefly, “I still kinda miss her.”

The whole room grew silent and I didn’t even dare looking up because I already knew exactly how both of them would react.

“I am sorry, Niall”, Julia whispered and I could feel her hand rubbing over my back, “but don’t you think it’s time to, you know, uhm, let go? You’ve been heartbroken for almost a year now. That’s quite the opposite of healthy.”

“It’s not that easy!”, I argued, annoyance growing inside of me.

“It’s the beginning of May now and you’ve split in June last year. I am only telling you this because I am your friend Niall, and I really care about you. You have to move on because as far as I know, she did too.”

Julia’s words hit me hard. It was one thing to always speculate how she was, where she was, if she still thought about me and us in general or if she already had someone new while I was unable to fully commit to a relationship anymore but hearing it from a friend of both her and I hurt even more. My heart felt like it had just been ripped out of my chest and trampled on.

“Do you really think that helps?!”, I yelled, finally looking up again and meeting Greg’s shocked glance and Julia’s calm one, “It fucking doesn’t if you haven’t noticed it by now! Because feelings don’t easily go away if I tell them to, and I won’t get over her by fucking being reminded of her wherever I fucking go! I told you I didn’t want to talk about it and I also knew you wouldn’t understand! So can we please fucking leave this alone and start making music?!”

The silence that followed was even more uncomfortable than the first one and I began to feel bad about what I just said. Neither Julia nor Greg could be held responsible for me still crying after my last girlfriend and Julia was actually right. I needed to man up and get over it.

“I am going to go to the store real quick”, Greg announced quietly, “I am going to get some snacks for us, any wishes?”

“Surprise us”, Julia replied and a few seconds after that, I heard a door slamming shut. 

I focused on my breathing and tried to seem as calm as possible even though I was fighting back the tears in the corners of my eyes. Why couldn’t I get this girl out of my mind? We had only been together for approximately a year and still I have gotten quicker over relationships that lasted longer than ours. 

“Niall, do you want to talk about it?”, Julia asked me and I felt her hand caressing my back again. I simply shrugged my shoulders. “We could talk about all of this together and maybe sort out your thoughts? I mean you know as well as I do that songwriting and talking about stuff helps, so let’s do it. I can tell that you’ve been bottling a whole lot up for the past year, right?”

I shrugged my shoulders once again but she was absolutely right. The only person I had really talked to had been Tara but only some parts of it and not everything. 

“So you basically know what happened that day she broke up with me right?”, I asked and Julia nodded. “It feels like the thought of her won’t leave me alone. Everything reminds me of her; places, songs, situations, even sayings! It feels like the whole world just wants to make sure I won’t forget about her and suffer even though I literally did nothing wrong! I’ve tried reaching her through so many different ways. I texted her, called her, I asked friends of both of ours to tell her stuff and I even tried emailing her but she won’t answer! I don’t understand how she can kick me out of her life like that, and I can’t! Was she really in love with me if she won’t even listen to me trying to explain everything?!”

I took a deep breath. “And today, I found one of her dresses in my wardrobe in London. The dress brought back memories of an amazing evening, probably one of the best we had and I can’t help but miss her and the whole time together with her. I really thought she was the one I would grow old with.”, I concluded and avoided Julia’s gaze because I knew exactly how she would be looking at me.

“Why don’t you try to write it down? Bring it into order?”, Julia proposed carefully and I nodded. 

“I’ll try”

For the next few minutes, we sat in complete silence. Julia was watching me smear words onto a loose piece of paper, reminding me from time to time that the order was wrong or didn’t make sense. She tried her best to calmly talk me through all of this and gently gave me advice once in a while. I felt better and better the more words ended up on the paper and when Greg finally came back with two giant plastic bags of snacks, the lyrics for a complete song were written down in front of me, waiting to be corrected by Greg.

The evening ended up being better than I thought. We enjoyed ourselves, ate sweets and found a melody and a title for the song. I felt better than before even though I knew that the whole subject Hailee was still touchy and I still wasn’t over her but it helped. And I couldn’t help but feel grateful for Julia sticking with me through this mess.


	14. New Angel

It was right after New Year’s Eve and I was standing in front of a Hotel window, overlooking Dublin. 

I’ve spent Christmas with my family, helped my mum cook the Christmas dinner and annoyed the shit out of Greg by spoiling Theo with a ton of presents. It had been a few lovely, quiet days in Mullingar and it had been exactly what I needed after this turbulent year. 

But right after Christmas I packed my bags once again and drove down to Dublin with some friends. We planned to properly celebrate the start of a new decade and obviously there was no better place to do so than Dublin. We celebrated in a huge club, got way too drunk and walked around the streets of the city for ages, trying to find our hotel. The day after we’ve spent mostly in bed, only getting up to go grab some food. But today was our last day in Dublin before I had to fly back to London tomorrow, so we decided to at least go out to a pub and grab some pints before having to say goodbye for a few months again. 

Even though it’s been over a year since my breakup with Hailee, it still was a taboo topic for me. I got better over time, writing songs did help a lot, but I still missed her from time to time. I knew that I needed to let go, that it was more a kind of missing the memories I had with her than missing her herself. I was getting there, step by step and at some point I would be able to find someone new and let them into my life. 

But that’s not what today’s night was about. Tonight was about having a great time with my lads before going back to work. I was eager to go out, and wanted to have a great time. I’d spent way too much time over the past year in my flat, sulking about a girl I couldn’t get back anyways. 

I realised that I started to space out so I quickly turned around and went through my suitcase, trying to decide what shirt I wanted to wear tonight. Tonight was going to be great, I didn’t need to start it with thinking about a certain ex-girlfriend. 

-

The music was loud and the bar was packed with people. Obviously we hadn’t been the only ones who had the idea. Tom stood up from our table and looked across the room. “I’m gonna try to order something at the bar. Tequila-Shots fine?” Everyone nodded in agreement, but I hesitated. 

“Maybe just Vodka-Shots?” I suggested and Tom frowned. 

“Since when do you not like Tequila?” 

“Since-” I started, but then stopped. This was stupid. Sure, I used to drink Tequila with Hailee, but I really shouldn’t give her the power to ruin a liquor for me. So instead I said: “Forget it. Tequila sounds awesome.” 

Two hours and eight shots later and definitely felt a bit tipsy as I was staring at the third pint in front of me. It was already almost empty and I was just waiting for Tom to come back with the next round. 

“Scoot over” Tom said when he came back. Next to him were three girls. “I met those lovely ladies at the bar,” Tom announced. “They kindly kept me company while I was waiting for all your drinks, so I invited them over. May I introduce Sarah, Grace and Jessica?” He pointed at each one of them. They all waved politely before sitting down at our table. Grace and Jessica sat down across from me while Sarah slipped onto the bench next to me. 

“Hi, I’m Sarah” she introduced herself once again and smiled at me. 

“So I’ve heard” I grinned while she started to blush. “I’m Niall,” I added. “Nice to meet you.”

Sarah was really nice. She obviously didn’t know who I was, because she asked me a tone of questions about what exactly I did for living (‘I work as a car mechanic’), where I was living (‘close to Manchester’) and about what I did in my free time (‘just the usual, hanging out with friends, playing football. Sometimes I like to sing, but I’m not really good’). While she was talking, she was playing with her long, brown hair and the looks from her round, brown eyes made it pretty obvious that she was flirting with me. 

“I’m gonna go to the toilet real quick” she said and disappeared into the crowd. I turned around to Henry, who was grinning at me. 

“What?” I asked confused and he nodded into the direction where Sarah just had disappeared. “She seems nice.”

“Yeah, and?” I asked and rolled my eyes. I knew where this was going. 

“Nothing” he replied, still grinning. “I mean, I get why you’d like her.”

“Everyone would like her,” I replied. “She’s really pretty. I’m not denying that fact.”

“Yeah but-” Henry started and stared at me with careful eyes. “She looks just like Hailee.”

“No she doesn’t” I objected.

“Yes, she does.”

Before I was able to reply, Sarah came back. And now I saw it too. Her hair was chocolate brown, wavy and long, just like Hailee’s was and her eyes had this sparkle I used to love about Hailee’s eyes. She was almost as tall as I was, had long legs and a round face. 

“You see it now?” Henry whispered next to me and I winced. 

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I replied and grabbed my now fifth pint. 

“Yeah it does” Henry disagreed. “It means that you’d never sleep with her.”

I started to get angry. “Of course I would!” I really would and I could if I wanted to. I just didn’t want to. I was here to have a great time with my friends, not to hook up with some random girl, no matter how nice she was. 

“No you wouldn’t. You’re still sulking after Hailee and you wouldn’t dare touching any other girl.”

I smashed my glass down on the table and stood up. “Come on,” I said to Sarah without looking at Henry. “Let’s dance.” She looked surprised, but grabbed my hand nonetheless.

I walked through the crowd until we reached the middle of the dancefloor, then I turned around to Sarah and pulled her closer to my chest. She wrapped her hands around my neck and started to move her hips to the beat. 

It’s been over a year since I felt touches like these and my skin felt hot under her fingers. My hands were on her waist as I pulled her a bit closer and placed one of my legs between hers. It was really hot in here. 

She looked at me with her big brown eyes and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the alcohol or if she was just a secret cousin of Hailee, but her eyes looked just like Hailee’s. The same shape, the same colour, the same spark. I leaned down and kissed her. 

We danced for a few songs, making out shamelessly on the dancefloor until I leaned down and whispered into her ear: “Let’s go to my hotel room.” She nodded and I grabbed her hand, walking over to the exit. When we walked past our friend’s table and I saw Henry’s grinning face, I just raised my hand, gave him the finger and left the bar without any further comment. 

-

“Nice hotel room” Sarah whispered into my ear while I was kissing her neck. Her hands went down to my belt, trying to open it up. “Yeah, the trip was a Christmas gift” I replied, remembering that to her I was Niall the car mechanic and not Niall Horan, singer and former boy band member. I pulled her over to my bed, sat down and pulled her onto my lap, my lips still connected with her neck. “But do you want to keep talking about our Christmas presents or do you want to help me get you out of this dress?”

She grinned and raised her arms.


	15. Arms of a Stranger

The sunlight peeking through the window tickled my face and caused me to slowly wake up. I felt my head pounding heavily and I groaned quietly. This was a sign I was getting older and should stop drinking as much as I had yesterday. 

I tried turning around in the bed but I wasn’t able to. Something was laying on my right arm and blocking me.  _ More like someone.  _

_ Hailee! _ , my mind screamed and I couldn’t help but smile and snuggle closer to the body next to me, nuzzling my head into her neck and hair and tightening my left arm around her waist. I inhaled deeply in order to fill my nose with her intoxicating scent, ready to fall asleep for another hour again.

Frowning my eyebrows, I realized that she smelled differently. I inhaled again. I could make out something fruity and heavy and not at all light and enjoyable to take in. That was most certainly not how Hailee used to smell. Her scent was flowery and light.

As I became more and more aware of my surroundings and the situation, memories of the past night started flooding my mind. It wasn’t Hailee laying next to me and sleeping peacefully, it was this girl I had met when Tom had brought her and her friends to our table. I couldn’t even remember her name when I opened my eyes carefully and noticed her brown hair spread out on the cushions and my face.

I scooted a bit away from her. I needed to clear my mind because I felt like I was spiralling. Closing my eyes once more, I brought a hand up to my forehead and rubbed it. I wasn’t feeling well and now I was also being confronted with a one night stand. How fucking perfect. It somehow reminded me of other times I had had in my life but at that time I had enjoyed the company of random, unknown girls.

I glanced at the ceiling and finally made the decision to search for some advil when the girl turned around and wrapped herself around my torso again. It took everything in me to not wake her up and tell her to leave. I felt like I was suffocating.

_ Breathe, Niall. _

I still recalled from last night that she looked awfully like Hailee and even Henry had noticed the similarities. But right now, I couldn’t point out any of them anymore. Her hair was far too light to match Hailee’s smooth chocolate one. Her facial features looked sharp and like carved into stone whereas Hailee’s were much smoother. She had chubbier cheeks which I absolutely adored about her even though I knew she hated that about her appearance. Her forehead was much higher than Hailee’s and her hair in general simply felt differently than Hailee’s. I had always used to kiss Hailee on the nose because I found it cute how she always scrunched it up whenever she disliked something. The girl next to me had a nose that was shaped in a whole other way. 

I couldn’t even remember how I had thought she looked like Hailee’s long lost sister yesterday. I mean it was not surprising that Henry hadn’t been able to spot the differences but I should have been able to.

_ Maybe you just didn’t want to see the differences and tried to make yourself believe for one last evening that Hailee was by your side, _ a voice inside my head nagged me and I tried to silence it immediately, but it kept screaming at me that I still wasn’t over Hailee. Which was utter bullshit because I wouldn’t have slept with another girl that willingly if I hadn’t been over Hailee. I mean, I had been really attracted to the girl yesterday and against all the comparisons to Hailee, she was undoubtedly pretty and probably one of the nicest one night stands I have had in my life.

_ Because you kept thinking she looked like Hailee and behaved exactly like her, _ the voice came to life again and this time, I involuntarily shook my head, trying to get these thoughts out of it.

I groaned, a bit louder this time, and started to unwrap myself from the woman’s grip around my torso. The air in my lungs seemed to get less and less and the suffocating feeling returned. I desperately needed to get away from this girl, right now.

I somehow managed to unwind myself from her, grabbed my phone from the nightstand and hurried into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. As I sank onto the toilet seat, my breaths became slower and steadier again and I felt relief washing over me.

Everything was fine. I repeated this phrase a couple times in my head until I was sure I had convinced myself entirely and brushed my teeth because I had literally no idea what else to do in this bathroom. After that I roamed through my stuff until I finally found what I had been longing for since I had woken up; Advil. I took a big gulp of water and swallowed the pill in the process. I didn’t know if it was only a placebo effect or something but it seemed like the pill soothed the pain in my head immediately.

After another few gulps of water, I sat down onto the toilet seat again. What was I even doing here? Was I fucking hiding from a girl? Why wouldn’t I join her in bed anymore if I was over Hailee? And what should I do when she woke up? What should I talk to her about?

Anxiety spread in my body and I suddenly didn’t feel as calm and collected again as I did just a couple of seconds ago.  _ Fuck. _

I unlocked my phone, going through the options to ask for advice. I obviously wasn’t in the state to come up with something myself so it would be the best to get help. Without overthinking it, I called Henry and felt indescribably happy when he answered after the second ring.

“Hey, Nialler! How was your night?”, I was able to hear Henry’s grin and rolled my eyes. “Did you get lucky?”

Henry had always been the guy to love to talk about girls and hook ups which I normally found amusing but not right now.

“I did, yeah. It was quite good.”, I replied, not even recalling if it had actually been that amazing but I was doing it for Henry’s sake and to not sound as freaked out as I felt. “But I don’t know what to do now.”

“What do you mean, what to do now?”, Henry asked carefully, “Did something happen?”

“No, no”, I quickly said, “but she could be waking up any second and I just don’t know what to do then. Should I make conversation? Tell her to leave? Have breakfast with her? I-”

Henry interrupted me with his loud laughter. “Man Niall, you really haven’t done this in a while, have you? Because you have more experience out of us in that department and should know best.”

“No”, I answered quietly, “please help me.”

“Okay, don’t worry and please calm down, there is no need to overthink anything”, Henry told me, sounding much more sincere and serious, “Are you still next to her?”

“Bathroom”, I replied briefly.

“Maybe just go out there and pray she is going to wake up soon? Then politely tell her to leave because you need to catch a flight. It’s not exactly a lie.”

“You’re right, I will try that”, I exhaled but suddenly I heard shuffling on the other side of the door and a faint voice calling out my name. My heart beat started picking up again and I felt uneasy. “She’s awake, I’ll call you later”, I mumbled and ended the call before Henry was able to reply.

I took a few deep breaths, mentally preparing myself to go out and talk to her like a normal person. Henry was right, she would understand, it wasn’t even lying and there was absolutely nothing wrong with the situation. 

_ Then why am I so anxious? _

I wanted to open the door. I really did. But I didn’t feel comfortable at all anymore. Everything I had just discussed with Henry felt too complicated and too unnatural and if I had been able to disappear through a hole in the ground I would’ve done exactly that. But it wasn’t that easy, so I stayed in the bathroom and listened to her shuffling around in the sheets.

“Niall, are you in the bathroom?”, I heard her voice. Apparently, she remembered my name.

The only thing that came to my mind that might help me was turning on the shower and wait for her reaction to that. I didn’t bother to get in there but listened to the stream gently hitting the floor of the shower. It actually calmed me down and drowned out any noises caused by the girl out there.

I let myself fall onto the toilet seat again and sighed heavily. I really thought I was over this. It had been one and a half years so in other words enough time to give the subject some rest, get some distance and focus. And finally get over her. But if the one night stand brought anything upon me despite anxiety and momentarily pleasure, it was the eye opener that the whole Hailee theme wasn’t done in the slightest. 

I had been so sure that the songwriting with some of my friends, talking and time had helped me banning her from both my heart and my mind, but turns out I had convinced neither. Somehow, I had noticed over the time that no one could really compare to Hailee, sure, because the instant attraction to both the personality and the looks was something I had experienced with other girls but it had never stayed the way it had with Hailee.

In my opinion, there was something about Hailee I couldn’t quite describe but that kept you drawn to her. She could be with you and a hundred other people in the room and she would still be the one to catch your eyes and draw your attention. 

All those things were facts I hadn’t been able to admit to myself until now. Now that I couldn’t escape those facts anymore because the clear evidence of not being over Hailee displayed itself in my hotel room.

I felt exhausted and done with hiding. I needed to get over Hailee because there was no chance we would get back together. I got up from the toilet seat, turned off the shower and unlocked the door, already figuring out what to say to the waiting girl. 

Except there was no one in the room but me. I was met by silence and the lack of female clothes on the hotel floor. I couldn’t help but feel relieved as I let myself fall onto the bed again. At least this mess just magically solved itself. 

As I turned around, I noticed a white piece of paper on the nightstand. Without hesitating I reached for it.

_ “I had a really nice time Niall, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stay. Call me some time? :) Sarah” _

So that was her name. She had scribbled her telephone number on the bottom of the paper but I already knew that I wouldn’t call her. I sighed and tossed the paper into the trash across the room. Sarah had been a nice company yesterday and she was pretty and all, but she was just not Hailee.


	16. Everywhere

I exhaled heavily when I entered the giant hall. Red carpets were not entirely the best thing about an award show, at least not alone. Having friends by your side could make posing for pictures easier, I knew that from past times. Or probably having your partner by your side but I had never done that before.

I glanced around the hall and spotted many familiar faces in the crowd, everyone was chatting away over one or two glasses of champagne and enjoying themselves. It didn’t really surprise me, the Brits were always a major event in the UK and even artists from other countries loved coming here every year to celebrate. I sent some people polite smiles and felt relieved when I finally found Tara in the middle of it all.

“I thought I’d never find you”, I sighed and grabbed a glass of champagne from the table in front of me.

“Sure seemed like it, you looked like a lost puppy”, Tara joked and I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help but laugh.

“You know I hate red carpets. Everyone behaves so posh and classy and what not and but wait until we see them at the after party later, they are going to be piss drunk.”

“Pssst, shut up!”, Tara whisper-shouted and elbowed me in the side which caused me to laugh even more, “You can’t say that here, some people might hear.”

“Come ooon baby, live a little”, I grinned at her and started tickling her side a bit which caused her to giggle.

“Stop, Niall! I am trying to be professional, you idiot!”

I laughed and already opened my mouth to reply when I suddenly caught a glimpse of a woman striding past our table. And it wasn’t just any woman, it was Hailee. She didn’t even gave me the tiniest bit of attention when she walked past us but I was completely paralyzed. Unable to take my eyes off her, I watched her walking over to another table. She looked absolutely gorgeous in her blue dress and I wished I could take her into my arms and move my hand through her smooth hair. It was the first time I saw her in person after the break up and it felt like my heart was breaking over again.

I quickly banned that thought from my head and was ready to give Tara my undivided attention when Hailee finally reached the table and engulfed the man waiting for her into a tight and passionate hug. Even though I hated to admit it, it hurt seeing her being perfectly fine and over me and it also hurt to admit that they actually looked quite good together.

“Don’t stare at her like that, you’re at least supposed to seem as if you’re fine”, Tara reminded me quietly which forced me to turn my glance to her. 

This was going to be a hell of a night and I wasn't entirely sure if I was ready for it.

-

“You killed it mate, congratulations!”, I pulled Lewis into the fifth hug for today, “I knew you were going to take this one home!”

“Thanks lad, love ya”, Lewis practically yelled. You could feel the energy and adrenaline radiate off him, “Let’s celebrate properly tonight, yeah? First drink is on me.”

“I am going to pin you down on that one”, I winked as I turned around, “Love ya too mate!”

Our ways parted after that and I was positive nothing could ruin my night. Lewis had finally gotten the recognition he deserved and partying with that guy was probably the best and funniest thing in the world. Completely drowned in thoughts, I hummed a melody and tried to find the exit of the backstage area to be able to sit down in the crowd again.

I wasn’t even necessarily paying attention until a well-known voice reached my ears. Lifting my gaze, my eyes met Hailee’s for a split second as she rushed past me, her hair barely caressing my face because of how narrow the backstage area was. Unintentionally, I inhaled her sweet scent and felt my heart drop. She did come with another guy but I should probably say something to her anyways, just to be polite.

As I turned around while walking, I followed her with my gaze until she disappeared around the next corner. Had I lost the ability to speak? I groaned, searching for words as I was already hurrying after her but I stopped dead in my tracks just a couple steps after. It was hopeless. And that’s exactly how I felt as well.

After hurrying into the opposite direction for another five minutes, I finally found the exit and quickly made my way through the tables until I reached Tara’s and mine. I plopped down onto the seat next to her and smiled apologetically when she asked me what had taken me so long.

“Just needed to celebrate with Lewis a bit.”

The spotlight shone down onto the stage and I could make out Hailee in company of Anne-Marie and Courtney Love on their way to present the next category. As Hailee started talking I felt mesmerized until she began to name groups that had changed the lives of people over the last few years.

“Way to try and get you riled up”, Tara’s eyebrows were raised as she shot me a look.

Hailee hadn’t even bothered to mention One Direction but naming other groups instead, well-knowing that not only Harry Styles but also I was watching in the crowd. We had talked about One Direction once. I could still remember the film night we had had until Hailee had turned around, looked at me with her bright eyes and asked if I was willing to talk about my time in One Direction.

So I had told her pretty much everything and answered every single question.

“You know, my first love were the Jonas Brothers”, she had laughed, causing me to roll my eyes, “But I really enjoyed your music, especially the last three albums. They are a jam!”

_ Jam my ass! _ If she really thought not mentioning One Direction was making me angry, she would be completely mistaken. I wasn’t angry. And I also wasn’t annoyed. I huffed briefly and shrugged my shoulders into Tara’s direction, being aware of the fact that at least three cameras were probably practically shoved into my face.

I couldn’t wait for the after party to start.

-

Two hours and a couple of drinks later, Tara excused herself. Apparently, she wasn’t feeling well and was leaving early. Fortunately, I ran directly into Ellie Goulding when I made my way to the after party so I didn’t seem as lonely as I felt.

“How are you doing, Niall? We haven’t seen each other in months!”, she laughed. It had always been easy to get along with Ellie and that’s probably also the reason we had hooked up in the past. The best thing about it was that we still got along and were able to ignore the fact that we had seen each other naked for a couple of times.

“I am fine, what about you? How is married life treating you?”, I laughed and Ellie joined in, “Quite well actually, sometime you just get to the turning point when hookups are just not the thing you want anymore.”

“Still trying to reach that point”, I joked, even though I was actually lying. The one night stand in Dublin had been the clear evidence that I was completely over this lifestyle.

“I could help you pick some chick up”, Ellie offered jokingly and I laughed.

“No thanks, you know my charm is irresistible”, I winked at her, “If I want to pick up a girl , I will achieve that on my own.”

Before Ellie could add anything, I nearly tripped over my own two feet as someone roughly pushed past me. Once again, I was laying my eyes on my ex girlfriend but this time, she didn’t ignore me. I received the dirtiest look I ever had from her, not even our break up could compare to that. After that, she turned around again and practically ran away from both Ellie and I, not daring to look back.

I could still feel Hailee glaring daggers into my back when she had already disappeared behind other celebrities. My face must have portrayed my current mood and shock quite well because Ellie simply wrapped her arm around me in a comforting way and quietly said: “If looks could kill, you’d be dead. You have to tell me what happened between the two of you sometime. It seems like you seriously messed up.”

And she wasn’t even wrong, I probably did. And not knowing what exactly I did, made me more of a bad guy in this situation than you could possibly be.

-

Ellie actually did a good job distracting me a bit at the after party. We talked for another half an hour, downing drinks and having fun until she announced that her husband was already waiting for her at home. If someone had told me three years ago, that Ellie had left a party early to join her husband on the couch, I would’ve probably laughed into their face.

As soon as she had left, my eyes searched for Lewis in the crowd. This idiot had promised to pay for my first drink and I was already holding onto my fifth. Instead of Lewis, I spotted Julia which was equally great. Unfortunately, she was deeply engaged into a conversation, vividly moving her hands along to what she was talking about. That was typical Julia and quite adorable.

I moved away from the table to politely join the conversation and not sulk around like a loner until I saw who she was talking to.  _ Hailee. _ And this fucking guy that practically hadn’t left her side since they had arrived at the hall. I came to a halt at the bar, trying to discreetly glance at the three of them. The guy was quite tall, at least taller than I was and had dark brown hair that fell into his forehead in curls which quite reminded me of 2013 Harry Styles.

Fucking copycat. Despite all of that, I had to admit that he was quite handsome and his facial features weren’t that deformed as well.  _ Shit. _

I was far too captured into thinking about Hailee and her new lover and how I was officially out of the picture now that I didn’t even notice Julia approaching me and waving in front of my face. 

“Are you okay?”, she asked as I snapped out of my daze.

“Perfectly fine”, I told her and leant against the bar. Maybe the drinks I had ordered with Ellie had been too many.

Julia had probably followed my glare before I had been aware of her because she laughed quietly and shook her head.

“The boy you’re looking at like you’re already planning on killing him”, she nodded into Hailee’s and his direction, “is a good friend of hers. So stop, it’s getting obvious.”

I groaned and took another gulp of my drink. “Have you ever heard of this thing called friends with benefits? You don’t just bring anybody to an award show, Julia.”

“Get over yourself, will you!”, Julia whisper-shouted angrily, “Miles is gay for God’s sake! And the poor guy is not responsible for you still grieving over Hailee.”

The words hit right into the gut but Julia was right. I had been jealous for absolutely no reason. Which wasn’t a good sign. At all. 

“Let’s go dance alright? And we have to find Lewis to get your mind off this”, Julia said gently and grabbed my arm in order to pull me through the crowd.

-

The next time I found myself at the bar was two hours later. Julia and I had danced, found Lewis and had a toast to his win. I actually enjoyed myself right now and I was surrounded by my friends which made it easier to momentarily forget about Hailee. I felt myself getting sober again so I decided to walk up to the bar on my own as Julia had excused herself to the toilet and Lewis had been talking to some other guys.

To my relief, the bar wasn’t as crowded as in the beginning anymore, so I had better access. I let my eyes wander over the options, immediately choosing a Tequila shot. I tried to gain the bartender’s attention but he walked into the opposite direction and I frowned. The most important thing was not to lose Lewis and Julia, otherwise I would be fine.

I smelled her again before I felt her presence beside me. Her scent got me intoxicated and that, added up to my current, half-drunken state engulfed me in a blurriness I couldn’t escape. I glanced at Hailee and turned my body to face her. She had changed into another, shorter dress since the last time I had seen her and there was no point in denying that she looked completely and utterly beautiful. 

To my surprise, Hailee turned her head to me and raised her eyebrows questioningly but it seemed rather annoyed than genuine. 

“Hi”, I brought over my lips, the liquor facilitating speaking to her.

At first, I got the impression that Hailee actually wanted to answer. Her mind seemed to be going through the options on how to greet me and I could swear I saw her lips already moving when she simply shook her head in what looked like disbelief.  _ Had I done something? _ I was prepared to ask her that but before I was even able to open my mouth, Hailee glared at me again. 

It seemed as if she was asking herself why I would even speak to her so I didn’t dare say anything else. I let my eyes wander over her facial features and met her glance, drowning in her eyes even though her gaze was everything but inviting. Well, to me, it was.

All of that happened in a few seconds, not longer, and it didn’t surprise me when Hailee turned around again and walked off to the other end of the bar. My heart still dropped at the realization that we apparently could not even share a short conversation. I could hear her ordering a Tequila shot and I sighed. I was not in the mood for another anymore.

Leaving the bar, I joined Lewis and Julia again in the hope of cheering myself up.

-

I closed the door of my cab and smiled at the driver who glanced at me through the rearview mirror. 

“Goodnight, Mister Horan, where are we going?”, he asked politely and started the engine.

“Goodnight”, I greeted him and told him the address of my apartment before looking out of the car window, drowning in deep thoughts.

It was four am and much later than I had intended it to get. After meeting Hailee at the bar, I had sworn myself that I would catch a cab in the next half an hour but Lewis had been able to convince me to stay quite a few times. Even Julia had left earlier than I did and she was in a much better mood than I was.

Fortunately, Lewis had looked away every time he had handed me a shot so I hadn’t drunk every single one of them. That had led to me being wide awake right now, but surprisingly sober at the same time.

I sighed as I recalled everything that had happened in the course of the night, groaning as I reminded myself of the uncomfortable and more than awkward moments Hailee and I had shared. The most confusing part was probably that, wherever I had gone, it had seemed as if she had followed me. As if she had been everywhere. Whenever I had turned my head, Hailee had appeared somewhere, seemingly out of nowhere and had caught me by surprise every single time.

Letting the image linger in my mind, I suddenly had an idea. I searched for my phone in the pocket of my jacket, opened the notes application and started typing away.  _ You’re everywhere I go  _ was the first part that I wrote. The line spoke to me on a whole other level after this night. Before the driver pulled up at my apartment complex, the lyrics to the song  _ Everywhere  _ had been written down, begging to be accompanied by some tunes.


	17. Still

_ My mind is complicated _

_ Find it hard to rearrange it _

_ But I'll have to find a way somehow _

_ Overreacting lately _

_ Find it hard to say I'm sorry _

_ But I'll make it up to you somehow _

_ And I just don't know why _

_ The stars won't shine at night _

_ Tell me you want it _

_ A thousand miles away from the day that we started _

_ But I'm standing here with you just tryna be honest _

_ If honesty means telling you the truth _

_ Well, I'm still in love with you _

_ Did I miscalculate this? _

_ Let's just go back to basics _

_ Forget about what's come and gone _

_ 'Cause I hate to see us like this _

_ Breaking up on nights just like this _

_ We should be shooting for them stars of gold _

_ So tell me you want it _

_ A thousand miles away from the day that we started _

_ But I'm standing here with you just tryna be honest _

_ If honesty means telling you the truth _

_ Then I guess we lost our focus _

_ And it's killing me that we could go to war like this _

_ But I'm standing here with you just tryna be honest _

_ If honesty means telling you the truth _

_ Well I'm still in love with you _

_ Oh, we'll be alright _

_ Oh, it'll be alright _

_ Oh, we'll be alright _

_ Oh, it'll be alright _

_ So tell me you want it _

_ A thousand miles away from the day that we started _

_ But I'm standing here with you just tryna be honest _

_ If honesty means telling you the truth _

_ I guess we lost our focus _

_ And it's killing me that we could go to war like this _

_ But I'm standing here with you just tryna be honest _

_ If honesty means telling you the truth _

_ Well I'm still in love with you _

The last notes started to fade out and I looked down, surprised to see my shirt wet. I hadn’t realised I had started to cry. 

This song was beautiful. Perfect. Heartbreaking. He was so hurt. I had hurt him so much. And he still loved me. 

I genuinely didn’t deserve him. I didn’t deserve those words. But he still wrote them. For me. 

When I had started listening to this album I had thought that it would give me some closure, that it would help me to get over him. I thought I would hear him singing about his new relationship or about his hookups with Tara, but all those songs were about me. It didn’t give closure, it opened my eyes. 

I still loved him. And I needed to get him back. Now.

I grabbed my phone from the sofa, forgetting that I had promised Kennedi to call her and walked over to the door. I slipped into my shoes, not bothering about the fact that I was still wearing joggers and that my hair was in a messy bun, and reached for my keys. I needed to see him.

-

The traffic in Los Angeles was a nightmare. Even though he didn’t live far away, it took me almost forty minutes to get to his house. In the car I listened to the album for a second time which led to my face being stained with tears all over again. 

I parked my car in front of his gate, tried to dry my face and unlocked the belt. I checked my face in the mirror one last time. I saw my messy hair, my wet cheeks and my red eyes. I knew I looked absolutely horrible, but I couldn’t care less. I was here to see Niall. 

I got out of the car and rushed to his door. Before I could start to overthink my actions I rang the bell and breathed heavily while I was waiting for him to open the door. 

Nothing happened. 

Maybe he wasn’t even here. It was stupid of me to assume that he would be in Los Angeles right now, I knew how much he loved London and that he usually spends his free time with his family. Of course he wouldn’t be here. I should just leave and send him a message, like every normal human being would do. 

I was about to turn around and leave when suddenly the door opened. I raised my eyes and looked directly into Niall’s blue ones. 

He looked just like the day I had left him. His hair was long and messy, it even started to curl in his neck, he was wearing a short jogging trouser and an old shirt. His eyes looked tired as if he had just woken up and he looked at me like he had seen a ghost. 

“Hailee? What are you doing here? Is everything okay? You look…”

“I also still love you” I interrupted him and his eyes got wide. “And I think we need to talk.”

\- THE END - 


End file.
